![]() ![]() The stories in this book enraged me, even if it was over events that occurred almost 200 years ago. And what were the British up to with the opium? Absolutely beyond shameful. Society was repressive, punitive and unjust. India in the early 19th century was disease-ridden and perilous. Just forge ahead with confidence and you won't miss anything. ![]() Note to readers: Ghosh is a good enough writer to craft the action and subsequent dialogue in such a way that you can always figure out what is happening in the dialect-laden scenes. ![]() Ghosh has researched and re-created the slang and sometimes entire dialects of the time period, and there are pages of dialogue on which I could barely understand a word. Despite the cast of thousands, I never had trouble keeping track of them, though I did sometimes struggle to understand them. Ghosh populates the Ibis with a fascinating crowd of characters, including several I really got attached to. The ensuing conflicts are brutal, but some people also find hope and at least a chance of happiness. It seemed to me that Ghosh is using the Ibis as a metaphor for India itself: a melting pot where disparate cultures, religions, castes and classes come together. It tells the story of the owners, crew and passengers of the Ibis, a former slave ship that has been retrofitted to carry indentured servants ("coolies") from India to Mauritius, where they will work on the sugar plantations. Sea of Poppies is the first volume of a trilogy set in India in the early 19th century, during the First Opium War. I read The Glass Palace last year and loved it. Amitav Ghosh writes huge, sprawling historical novels about India and South Asia. ![]()
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