Ghosh, a native of India, spent his childhood all over Asia. An Oxford-trained anthropologist, he’s intimately familiar with the study of cultures and personally acquainted with the exchanges among disparate peoples. He has long divided his time between the U.S. and India, and now in his mid 50s, he’s pronounced the Ibis trilogy his life’s project. It seems, at first glance, that he’s taken quite the departure from previous work. (Missing is the fiercely postmodern style that characterized earlier novels.) But his concerns—an engagement with history and colonialism, the shifting of borders (and memory), and the gathering of knowledge—as well the politics, remain much the same
The Ibis trilogy in a fictional larger than life description tried …show more content…
He tried to make the second book more fresh and realistic. His attempts laid fruit when he introduced only few characters for his rest of the narration. The characters are the special attraction to the book with their perception of life. Ghosh brought only 3 characters into lime light and made sure that the narration was impactful in their words and experiences. Each and every character has been victim of the society. This is where the reality of life emerges in this fictional …show more content…
Readers will notice that Ghosh chooses not to directly continue the plot from the first book, which ends on quite the cliffhanger, but charts a more circuitous route. Uncertainties surrounding the characters’ futures resolve only partially, and over time. Moreover, the Ibis’ most familiar faces recede into the background for much of the novel.
River of Smoke, the midway point in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy—his chronicle of the Opium Wars, the nineteenth-century contest between the British Empire and the Qing Dynasty over the fate of trade in China—is densely packed with happenings and intrigue without ever managing to come together as a novel in its own right. Instead, it reads as a very long prelude to what one can only presume will be the outbreak of war in the as-yet-unpublished third book.
The story of the opium trade is an ugly one, but the spirit of the novel is enthusiastic tragicomedy, not moralising post-hoc gloom. And for all the writer's sympathy with the Chinese authorities, there's no lament in here for the loss of past purity. The writing can't help coming down on the side of the rich intercourse of ports and traders, the hybridity born of cultural contact, language in pidgin and port slang, and sexual encounters across the barriers of race and
The Ibis trilogy in a fictional larger than life description tried …show more content…
He tried to make the second book more fresh and realistic. His attempts laid fruit when he introduced only few characters for his rest of the narration. The characters are the special attraction to the book with their perception of life. Ghosh brought only 3 characters into lime light and made sure that the narration was impactful in their words and experiences. Each and every character has been victim of the society. This is where the reality of life emerges in this fictional …show more content…
Readers will notice that Ghosh chooses not to directly continue the plot from the first book, which ends on quite the cliffhanger, but charts a more circuitous route. Uncertainties surrounding the characters’ futures resolve only partially, and over time. Moreover, the Ibis’ most familiar faces recede into the background for much of the novel.
River of Smoke, the midway point in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy—his chronicle of the Opium Wars, the nineteenth-century contest between the British Empire and the Qing Dynasty over the fate of trade in China—is densely packed with happenings and intrigue without ever managing to come together as a novel in its own right. Instead, it reads as a very long prelude to what one can only presume will be the outbreak of war in the as-yet-unpublished third book.
The story of the opium trade is an ugly one, but the spirit of the novel is enthusiastic tragicomedy, not moralising post-hoc gloom. And for all the writer's sympathy with the Chinese authorities, there's no lament in here for the loss of past purity. The writing can't help coming down on the side of the rich intercourse of ports and traders, the hybridity born of cultural contact, language in pidgin and port slang, and sexual encounters across the barriers of race and