Amitav Ghosh, raised in Calcutta, educated in India, Egypt and England, now a resident of his homeland and Brooklyn, has long been inclined toward sweeping, panoramic novels such as The Glass Palace and The Hungry Tide, works that successfully transport readers to densely rendered locales.
With Sea of Poppies, a work of astonishing ambition that was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Ghosh has widened his aperture to take in a larger landscape enlightened by discovery yet shackled by racial prejudice and immutable attitudes toward class and faith. It’s one of the best 19th-century novels of the year.
Set in 1838 on the eve of the Opium Wars, Poppies begins with the arrival of the schooner Ibis in Ghazipur on the Ganges, near the vaunted Benares poppy fields. A former slave ship, the Ibis embarks on a journey promising freedom for some of its human cargo and indentured servitude for others, setting out to Mauritius by way of the Andaman Islands.
The universe described here is one of unwitting subjugation. Opium, the Ibis’ other haul, proves an apt metaphor for the fate of many characters. The drug initially intoxicates, serving as a palliative from daily suffering, until ultimately forcing bondage upon the addict.
