River of Smoke (Ibis Trilogy, 2)
Amitav Ghosh, 2011
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374174231
Summary
The Ibis, loaded to its gunwales with a cargo of indentured servants, is in the grip of a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal; among the dozens flailing for survival are Neel, the pampered raja who has been convicted of embezzlement; Paulette, the French orphan masquerading as a deck-hand; and Deeti, the widowed poppy grower fleeing her homeland with her lover, Kalua.
The storm also threatens the clipper ship Anahita, groaning with the largest consignment of opium ever to leave India for Canton. And the Redruth, a nursery ship, carries Frederick “Fitcher” Penrose, a horticulturist determined to track down the priceless treasures of China that are hidden in plain sight: its plants that have the power to heal, or beautify, or intoxicate. All will converge in Canton’s Fanqui-town, or Foreign Enclave: a tumultuous world unto itself where civilizations clash and sometimes fuse. It is a powder keg awaiting a spark to ignite the Opium Wars.
Spectacular coincidences, startling reversals of fortune, and tender love stories abound. But this is much more than an irresistible page-turner. The blind quest for money, the primacy of the drug trade, the concealment of base impulses behind the rhetoric of freedom: in River of Smoke the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries converge, and the result is a consuming historical novel with powerful contemporary resonance. Critics praised Sea of Poppies for its vibrant storytelling, antic humor, and rich narrative scope; now Amitav Ghosh continues the epic that has charmed and compelled readers all over the globe. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1956
• Where—Kolkata, India
• Education—St. Stephen's College, Deli; Delhi University;
Ph.D., Oxford University.
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives in New York City; Kolkata and Goa, India
Amitv Ghosh is the internationally bestselling author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Glass Palace, and is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes. Ghosh divides his time between Kolkata and Goa, India, and Brooklyn, New York. (From the publisher.)
More
Ghosh was born in Kolkata (Calcutta) and was educated at The Doon School; St. Stephen's College, Delhi; Delhi University; and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in social anthropology.
Ghosh lives in New York with his wife, Deborah Baker, author of the Laura Riding biography In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding (1993) and a senior editor at Little, Brown and Company. They have two children, Lila and Nayan.
He has been a Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. In 1999, Ghosh joined the faculty at Queens College, City University of New York as Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature. He has also been a visiting professor to the English department of Harvard University since 2005. Ghosh has recently purchased a property in Goa and is returning to India.
Sea of Poppies (2008), the first installment of a planned trilogy, is an epic saga, set just before the Opium Wars, which encapsulates the colonial history of the East. The second in the trilogy, River of Smoke was published in 2011.
His previous novels are The Circle of Reason (1986), The Shadow Lines (1990), In an Antique Land (1992), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma (1998), Countdown (1999), The Glass Palace (2000) and The Hungry Tide (2004). Ghosh's fiction is characterised by strong themes that may be somewhat identified with postcolonialism but could be labelled as historical novels. His topics are unique and personal; some of his appeal lies in his ability to weave "Indo-nostalgic" elements into more serious themes.
In addition to his novels, Ghosh has written The Imam and the Indian (2002), a large collection of essays on different themes such as fundamentalism, history of the novel, Egyptian culture, and literature).
In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government.
Amitav Ghosh's literary awards include:
• Prix Medicis Etranger (French; for Circle of Reason)
• Sahitya Akademic and Ananda Pursaskar Awards (Indian;
for The Shadow Lines)
• Arthur C. Clarke Award (UK; for The Calcutta Chromosome)
• Grand Prize-Fiction, Frankfurt International e-Book Awards
(for The Glass Palace)
• Hutch Crossword Book Prize (Indian; for The Hungry Tide)
• Grinzane Cavour Prize (Italian)
• Shortlisted for Man Booker (UK; for Sea of Poppies)
(Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
River of Smoke does not disappoint...[it] reclaims a story appropriated for too long by its winners...yet Ghosh does so without excessive earnestness, leavening his narrative with nuggets of fact and insight...[his] historical judgments are largely rendered subtly, without any of the sledgehammer effect of retrospective moralism that a lesser writer might have employed…With River of Smoke, Ghosh's Ibis trilogy is emerging as a monumental tribute to the pain and glory of an earlier era of globalization.
Shashi Tharoor - Washington Post
On one level, [River of Smoke] is a remarkable feat of research, bringing alive the hybrid customs of food and dress and the competing philosophies of the period with intimate precision; on another it is a subversive act of empathy, viewing a whole panorama of world history from the 'wrong' end of the telescope. The real trick, though, is that it is also fabulously entertaining.
Observer (UK)
Eloquent.... Fascinating.... [River of Smoke's] strength lies in how thoroughly Ghosh fills out his research with his novelistic fantasy, seduced by each new situation that presents itself and each new character, so that at their best the scenes read with a sensual freshness as if they were happening now.
Guardian (UK)
[This] vast book has a Dickensian sweep of characters, high- and low-life intermingling . . . Ghosh conjures up a thrilling sense of place.
Economist (UK)
Brillian.... By the book’s stormy and precarious ending, most readers will clutch it like the ship’s rail awaiting, just like Ghosh’s characters, the rest of the voyage to a destination unknown.
Don Oldenburg - USA Today
Ghosh’s best and most ambitious work ye.... [He] writes with impeccable control, and with a vivid and sometimes surprising imagination.
New Yorker
Ghosh sets the second volume of his Ibis trilogy in 1838, appropriately enough, because at heart he's a 19th-century novelist with a sweeping vision of character and culture.... Ghosh triumphs both through the clarity of his style and the sweep of his vision, and he leaves the reader eager for volume three.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The opening scenes recount Deeti's survival after she and Kalua escaped the Ibis. She insists that destiny, not chance, led her to the site of her hidden shrine. For her, what does destiny mean? What legacies does she pass on to the next generation?
2. Like many of the novel's characters, Ah Fatt and Robin Chinnery have bicultural ancestries. What limitations and freedoms accompany their lack of a legitimate, aristocratic bloodline? Do ancestry and prestige go hand in hand in River of Smoke?
3. Discuss Bahram's and Fitcher's motivations. Are they simply greedy?
4. Paulette is a master of disguise and can comfortably move between cultures. What does she consider to be her true identity? Why is horticulture a suitable field for her?
5. Discuss the role of religion in shaping the characters' view of the world. How are the novel's Hindu characters affected by the expectations of the gods? When Christian characters justify the opium trade, how do they reconcile it with their faith? (You may enjoy revisiting Charles King's letter to Charles Elliot near the book's final pages.)
6. Bahram and Zadig discuss the experience of having an additional, foreign wife, debating whether love is a factor. How does the relationship between Bahram and Chi-mei change over the years? Would Bahram enjoy Canton as much if he weren't a foreigner?
7. How do the trilogy's ships—the formerly slave-trading Ibis, Fitcher's practical but eccentric-looking Redruth, and the treasure-laden Anahita (named for a Hindu goddess of water)—reflect their passengers?
8. In chapter seven, Robin's letter describes the Pearl River as a suburb of Canton. In chapter thirteen, Zadig recalls the legend that claims the river got its name from a foreign trader who dropped a mysterious pearl. Drawing on these and other impressions, discuss the Pearl River as a character: how would you describe its powers and its personality?
9. Consider Ghosh's penchant for intertwining fates. For example, Ah Fatt had been Neel's companion in the labor prison, while Neel (qualified to work as a munshi because of the education that accompanied his noble status) is close by when Mr. Punhyqua is arrested, marking the unlikely fall of another member of the ruling class. Does Ghosh create tragicomedy or pure irony in story lines such as these?
10. Near the end of chapter six, Bahram has a chance encounter with Napoleon (a scene inspired by reported encounters between the French emperor and seafaring traders). If you had been in Bahram's position, what would you have asked Napoleon?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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