Sea of Poppies: A Novel (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: mission house, old zemindar, opium factory, Baboo Nob Kissin, Serang All, Miss Lambert (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Diaspora, myth and a fascinating language mashup propel the Rubik's cube of plots in Ghosh's picaresque epic of the voyage of the Ibis, a ship transporting Indian girmitiyas (coolies) to Mauritius in 1838. The first two-thirds of the book chronicles how the crew and the human cargo come to the vessel, now owned by rising opium merchant Benjamin Burnham. Mulatto second mate Zachary Reid, a 20-year-old of Lord Jim–like innocence, is passing for white and doesn't realize his secret is known to the gomusta (overseer) of the coolies, Baboo Nob Kissin, an educated Falstaffian figure who believes Zachary is the key to realizing his lifelong mission. Among the human cargo, there are three fugitives in disguise, two on the run from a vengeful family and one hoping to escape from Benjamin. Also on board is a formerly high caste raj who was brought down by Benjamin and is now on his way to a penal colony. The cast is marvelous and the plot majestically serpentine, but the real hero is the English language, which has rarely felt so alive and vibrant. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

Ghosh�s best and most ambitious work yet is an adventure story set in nineteenth-century Calcutta against the backdrop of the Opium Wars. On the Ibis, a ship engaged in transporting opium across the Bay of Bengal, varied life stories converge. A fallen raja, a half-Chinese convict, a plucky American sailor, a widowed opium farmer, a transgendered religious visionary are all united by the �smoky paradise� of the opium seed. Ghosh writes with impeccable control, and with a vivid and sometimes surprising imagination: a woman�s tooth protrudes �like a tilted gravestone�; an opium addict�s writhing spasms are akin to �looking at a pack of rats squirming in a sack�; the body of a young man is �a smoking crater that had just risen from the ocean and was still waiting to be explored.�
Copyright ©2008 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1 edition (October 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374174229
• ISBN-13: 978-0670082032
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (85 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #120,953 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a magnificent historical epic, October 4, 2008

By	Aleksandra Nita-Lazar (MD, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

(What's this?)

When the former slaving ship, the Ibis, sails off from America to India, Zachary Reid enlists as a ship's carpenter to escape his American fate as a son of a freed slave girl and her master. Little does he know, how much his life will actually be transformed by this decision...

The year is 1838, and Asia is on the eve of the Opium Wars. The fates of several people become intertwined, as they make their way onto the Ibis. Deeti is a peasant who grows crops of opium, and a wife of the opium factory worker, addicted to the drug. When her husband dies, grey-eyed Deeti has to escape the attention of her vicious brother-in-law. Her only idea is the sati - but unexpectedly, she is snatched from the funeral pyre and becomes an outcast together with her savior, Kalua, the village strongman from the caste of untouchables. They decide to become indentured workers ("coolies") and seek their happiness in the Mauritius. Paulette Lambert, the daughter of a French botanist, is orphaned and cannot bear the strange behavior of Mr Burnham (who happens to be the owner of Ibis), and his family, when he takes her under his protective roof. Neel Rattan, the Raja, finds himself unable to adjust to the changing ways of the colonial world, and, bankrupt, is send to exile. In jail, he meets the half-Chinese Ah Fatt, convicted for robbery. Baboo Nob Kissin (the funniest and probably the most tragic of the main characters), the company's accountant, filled with religious spirit, is overcome by the need of establishing a shrine. All of these original, hilarious characters come to see the overseas trip as an escape. And so their journey is the new beginning.

Amitav Ghosh wrote a great, magnificent, epic novel, a beautiful, complex story revolving around central characters, original and colorful, a great choice of the representatives of the nineteenth-century society in colonial Asia. There are also many great secondary characters (the ship's first mate, Jack Crowle; Jodu, the peasant turned lascar; Serang Ali - the lascar's boss with the gloomy past; the flirtatious girl Munia; and many others), who add a lot of flavor.

The historical details are thoroughly researched - for me, coming from Europe and ignorant of the most part of Asian history, it was a great lesson. The global problems tackled by the author, colonial politics, wars, caste and race, remain significant even today. The geography and landscape descriptions, from India, Calcutta, Mauritius (real and imaginary) to the Sundarbans , one of Ghosh's favorite locations, are also alluring.
The incredibly rich language adds the whole other dimension to the novel. I have to admit that at the beginning the linguistic peculiarities characteristic for each character made the novel difficult to read and I needed to adjust for a while. The sea pidgin, Bengali, Hindi and other dialects of India incorporated into English, with some French added on top of all that, create a unique mix of idiolects. There is a lovely bonus at the end in a form of meticulously done appendix containing Neel's dictionary of sea pidgin, called Chrestomathy.

Fate also plays an essential part in this novel - there are characters, like Deeti, who has a vision of the Ibis, or Baboo Nob Kissin, obsessively devoted to Krishna and his female guru so that he sees signs and omens everywhere, who follow their fate, and there are those who try to run away or do not believe in it... It is intriguing to observe how the fate is present in everyone's story.

I loved the flow of this novel and was completely immersed in the plot, so that I laughed laud at Baboo Nob Kissin and could not repress melancholy and anger when I read some passages. If I could compare it to any other book, it would probably be Barth's "The Sot-Weed Factor" - a picaresque novel of the sea and sailors, which, although set in a very different point in time and space, came to my mind when I was reading "Sea of Poppies".

The open ending left me a little disappointed, because I yearned to know more about the fates of the characters I got to know so well. Therefore, I was very happy to learn that "Sea of Poppies" is the first novel of the planned "Ibis" trilogy. I will await the second one impatiently, hoping that the author can keep up with the first one and will not disappoint the readers!

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "If it is God's will that opium be used as an instrument to open China to his teachings, then so be it.", October 15, 2008

By	Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

(What's this?)

(4.5 stars) When the Ibis, a "blackbirder," leaves Calcutta and sets out across the Bay of Bengal carrying "indentured migrants," the seas darken and become stormy. As the ship tosses and conditions deteriorate, the ship becomes a microcosm for life on land, full of tumult and unexpected twists of fate, as each person's heart is laid bare. Everybody aboard is escaping from something, so anxious to put their problems behind them that they see no choice but to submit to the atrocious living conditions and sometimes sadistic overseers.

Set in India in 1838, at the outset of the three-year Opium War between the British and the Chinese, this epic novel follows several characters from different levels of society who become united through their personal lives aboard the ship and, more generally, through their connections to the opium and slave trades. Deeti Singh, married as a young teenager to a man whose dependence on opium makes him an inadequate husband and provider, is forced to work on the family's opium field outside Ghazipur by herself, though she fears her sadistic brother-in-law. Zachary Reid, a young sailor from Baltimore has left America because his status as an octoroon has led to constant harassment by other American sailors.

At the opposite end of the scale is Benjamin Burnham, who owns the Ibis and engages in the opium trade. Formerly a slave trader, Burnham now transports exiled prisoners and coolies, and he has acquired enormous wealth and a lavish lifestyle impossible for him in England. Among his acquaintances is Raja Neel Rattan Halder, the zemindar of Raskali, who, accustomed to the unimaginable opulence that upper caste Brahmins assume is their right by birth, has paid little attention to his dwindling resources, and he has now accumulated debts.

Ghosh depicts the lives of these characters and their acquaintances in extravagant and thoroughly researched detail, bringing to life Deeti's misery, the expectations for her within her husband's family, and the customs which she must honor, for example. He fully describes buildings, their contents, bath facilities, dining customs, religious practices, the inside of a slave ship, and even the importance of omens, but he never forgets his obligation as a story-teller, continuously presenting one highly dramatic moment after another. Stories of piracy and cruelty, often growing out of the opium trade, exist side by side with more personal stories of love and nobility. Ghosh's use of local patois creates a rich and colorful atmosphere, and episodes of humor live side by side with episodes of terror. The first book in a projected "Ibis trilogy," this historical novel pulses with life, and as the novel comes to a satisfying close, Ghosh keeps several doors open, suggesting the direction he will take with this novel's sequel. n Mary Whipple

The Glass Palace: A Novel
The Shadow Lines: A Novel
The Circle of Reason
Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of our Times
The Hungry Tide: A Novel

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars if Part I; Three if a Stand-Alone, November 5, 2008

By	Richard Wells (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

(What's this?)

It's good to hear (though it's unconfirmed,) that "Sea of Poppies," is part one of a projected trilogy, because although it's a beautifully styled (I'd say extravagantly written,) completely engaging, well researched work of historical fiction, it closes without a satisfactory end. Three stars as a stand-alone, (despite its many merits, and because of the ending;) five stars if it is, indeed, installment one.

Beautifully styled - extravagantly written. I've not read other works by Amitav Ghosh, so I'm not familiar with his stylistic strategies, but "The Sea of Poppies," is written with the love of language I've come to expect from Indian novelists. Mr. Ghosh has captured both the English and the "Hing-lish," of the Victorian Age, and enriched it with a delightful and descriptive patois and pidgin. I don't know how much Mr. Ghosh has invented whole cloth, and how much is a result of research, but it's hugely entertaining, and perhaps near genius. Yes, it does leave you slightly at sea in terms of full understanding, but I find that to be part of the charm. (I've nodded my head in befuddlement in many countries.) It reminds me of the language recorded in the Booker Prize winning, Sacred Hunger" by Barry Unsworth, another beautifully written novel about fretful times.

Well researched. Even as a student of India, the scenes and details of "The Sea of Poppies," were new to me. Village life, city life; the tics, prejudices, and beliefs of the hoi polloi as well as the ruling classes; the facts and lore of the opium trade, the merchant life, and life at sea are all well limned and thoroughly convincing - and enchanting, though not in the whimsical sense that word is usually employed to describe. The description of a walk through an opium refining plant is worth the price of admission. Mr Ghosh engages all the readers' senses in his detailed portrayals of character as well as location. You can smell the ship, "Ibis," not pleasant, but...

Totally engaging. I can't say as I experienced a dull moment. It's a romance, an adventure, a history all combined with a colorful cast of characters and exotic settings.