At the end of “Sea of Poppies,” British opium interests in India were pressing for the use of force in China in the name of free trade. What unites the novels, though, is opium. But “River of Smoke” requires little familiarity with its predecessor the Ganges makes way here for Canton, and the protagonists - traders, orphans, imperialists, smugglers, painters and mandarins - live in a different world from the one Ghosh described in his previous volume. In the same waters is the Redruth, on which sails a Cornish botanist looking for rare plants, especially the mythical golden camellia, and assisted by the Bengal-raised French orphan Paulette from the Ibis. Its sequel catches another storm-tossed vessel, the Anahita, a sumptuously built cargo ship laden with opium owned by Bombay merchant Bahram Modi, as it heads to China. “Sea of Poppies” ended amid a raging storm, rocking the triple-masted schooner, the Ibis, and its colorful array of seamen, convicts and demi-slaves. Although he did not win, anticipation surrounding the second volume of this trilogy has remained high. That novel, about the indentured servants press-ganged from India’s Gangetic plain and shipped off to the British colony of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Three years ago, with the publication of “ Sea of Poppies,” his sixth novel, the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh embarked on a trilogy about the experience of emigration, both coerced and voluntary, in the early 19th century.
0 kommentar(er)
