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River of Smoke: A Novel (The Ibis Trilogy), by Amitav Ghosh
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A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of Year
A NPR Best Book of the Year
In Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies, the Ibis began its treacherous journey across the Indian Ocean, bound for the cane fields of Mauritius with a cargo of indentured servants. Now, in River of Smoke, the former slave ship flounders in the Bay of Bengal, caught in the midst of a deadly cyclone. The storm also threatens the clipper ship Anahita, groaning with the largest consignment of opium ever to leave India for Canton. Meanwhile, the Redruth, a nursery ship, carries horticulturists determined to track down the priceless botanical treasures of China. All will converge in Canton's Fanqui-town, or Foreign Enclave, a powder keg awaiting a spark to ignite the Opium Wars. A spectacular adventure, but also a bold indictment of global avarice, River of Smoke is a consuming historical novel with powerful contemporary resonance.
- Sales Rank: #53480 in Books
- Brand: Picador USA
- Published on: 2012-10-02
- Released on: 2012-10-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.16" h x .4" w x 5.52" l, 1.15 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 521 pages
- Picador USA
Review
“Brilliantly done…A monumental tribute to the pain and glory of an earlier era of globalization…There will be more, undoubtedly, when the final installment of the Ibis trilogy arrives. I can hardly bear to wait.” ―The Washington Post
“Gripping…Ghosh has made humanely clear the cold cynicism of the Opium Wars.” ―Richard Eder, The Boston Globe
“Ghosh continues to amaze. Few authors since Melville and Joyce have excelled at both rambunctious, rangy linguistic play and deeply and lovingly observed human insight like this.” ―Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Masterful…River of Smoke is a wonderful mixture of people, places, and story that captures a moment in history like an insect snared in amber.” ―Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Wonderful…[Gosh] is creating one of the best historical narratives in recent memory.” ―Time Out (New York)
About the Author
Amitav 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.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
RIVER OF SMOKE (Chapter One)
Deeti’s shrine was hidden in a cliff, in a far corner of Mauritius, where the island’s western and southern shorelines collide to form the wind-whipped dome of the Morne Brabant. The site was a geological anomaly – a cave within a spur of limestone, hollowed out by wind and water – and there was nothing like it anywhere else on the mountain. Later Deeti would insist that it wasn’t chance but destiny that led her to it – for the very existence of the place was unimaginable until you had actually stepped inside it.
The Colver farm was across the bay and towards the end of Deeti’s life, when her knees were stiff with arthritis, the climb up to the shrine was too much for her to undertake on her own: she wasn’t able to make the trip unless she was carried up in her special pus-pus – a contraption that was part palki and part sedan chair. This meant that visits to the shrine had to be full-scale expeditions, requiring the attendance of a good number of the Colver menfolk, especially the younger and sturdier ones.
To assemble the whole clan – La Fami Colver, as they said in Kreol – was never easy since its members were widely scattered, within the island and abroad. But the one time of year when everyone could be counted on to make a special effort was in midsummer, during the Gran Vakans that preceded the New Year. The Fami would begin mobilizing in mid-December, and by the start of the holidays the whole clan would be on the march; accompanied by paltans of bonoys, belsers, bowjis, salas, sakubays and other in-laws, the Colver phalanxes would converge on the farm in a giant pincer movement: some would come overland on ox-carts, from Curepipe and Quatre Borne, through the misted uplands; some would travel by boat, from Port Louis and Mahébourg,hugging the coast till they were in sight of the mist-veiled nipple of the Morne.
Much depended on the weather, for a trek up the wind-swept mountain could not be undertaken except on a fine day. When the conditions seemed propitious, the bandobast would start the night before. The feast that followed the puja was always the most eagerly awaited part of the pilgrimage and the preparations for it occasioned much excitement and anticipation: the tin-roofed bungalow would ring to the sound of choppers and chakkis, mortars and rolling-pins, as masalas were ground, chutneys tempered, and heaps of vegetables transformed into stuffings for parathas and daal-puris. After everything had been packed in tiffin-boxes and gardmanzés, everyone would be bundled off for an early night.
When daybreak came, Deeti would take it on herself to ensure that everyone was scrubbed and bathed, and that not a morsel of food passed anyone’s lips – for as with all pilgrimages, this too had to be undertaken with a body that was undefiled, within and without. Always the first to rise, she would go tap-tapping around the wood-floored bungalow, cane in hand, trumpeting a reveille in the strange mixture of Bhojpuri and Kreol that had become her personal idiom of expression: Revey-té! É Banwari; é Mukhpyari! Revey-té na! Haglé ba?
By the time the whole tribe was up and on their feet, the sun would have set alight the clouds that veiled the peak of the Morne. Deeti would take her place in the lead, in a horse-drawn carriage, and the procession would go rumbling out of the farm, through the gates and down the hill, to the isthmus that connected the mountain to the rest of the island. This was as far as any vehicle could go, so here the party would descend. Deeti would take her seat in the pus-pus, and with the younger males taking turns at the poles, her chair would lead the way up, through the thick greenery that cloaked the mountain’s lower slopes.
Just before the last and steepest stretch of the climb there was a convenient clearing where everyone would stop, not just to catch their breath, but also to exclaim over the manifik view of jungle and mountain, contained between two sand-fringed, scalloped lines of coast.
Deeti alone was less than enchanted by this spectacular vista. Within a few minutes she’d be snapping at everyone: Levé té! We’re not here to goggle at the zoli-vi and spend the day doing patati-patata. Paditu! Chal!
To complain that your legs were fatigé or your head was gidigidi was no use; all you’d get in return was a ferocious: Bus to fana! Get on your feet!
It wouldn’t take much to rouse the party; having come this far on empty stomachs, they would now be impatient for the post-puja meal, the children especially. Once again, Deeti’s pus-pus, with the sturdiest of the menfolk holding the poles, would take the lead: with a rattling of pebbles they would go up a steep pathway and circle around a ridge. And then all of a sudden, the other face of the mountain would come into view, dropping precipitously into the sea. Abruptly, the sound of pounding surf would well up from the edge of the cliff, ringing in their ears, and their faces would be whipped by the wind. This was the most hazardous leg of the journey, where the winds and updraughts were fiercest. No lingering was permitted here, no pause to take in the spectacle of the encircling horizon, spinning between sea and sky like a twirling hoop. Procrastinators would feel the sting of Deeti’s cane: Garatwa! Keep moving …
A few more steps and they’d reach the sheltered ledge of rock that formed the shrine’s threshold. This curious natural formation was known to the family as the Chowkey, and it could not have been better designed had it been planned by an architect: its floor was broad and almost flat, and it was sheltered by a rocky overhang that served as a ceiling. It had something of the feel of a shaded veranda, and as if to complete the illusion, there was even a balustrade of sorts, formed by the gnarled greenery that clung to the edges of the ledge. But to look over the side, at the surf churning at the foot of the cliff, took a strong stomach and a steady head: the breakers below had travelled all the way up from Antarctica and even on a calm, clear day the water seemed to surge as though it were impatient to sweep away the insolent speck of land that had interrupted its northward flow.
Yet such was the miracle of the Chowkey’s accidental designthat visitors had only to sit down for the waves to disappear from view – for the same gnarled greenery that protected the shelf served also to hide the ocean from those who were seated on the floor. This rocky veranda was, in other words, the perfect place to foregather, and cousins visiting from abroad were often misled into thinking that it was this quality that had earned the Chowkey its name – for was it not a bit of a chowk, where people could assemble? And wasn’t it something of a chokey too, with its enclosing sides? But only a Hindi-speaking etranzer would think in that vein: any islander would know that in Kreol the word ‘chowkey’ refers also to the flat disc on which rotis are rolled (the thing that is known Back There as a ‘chakki’). And there it was, Deeti’s Chowkey, right in the middle of the rock shelf, crafted not by human hands but by the wind and the earth: it was nothing but a huge boulder that had been worn and weathered into a flat-topped toadstool of stone. Within moments of the party’s arrival, the women would be hard at work on it, rolling out tissue-thin daal-puris and parathas and stuffing them with the delectable fillings that had been prepared the night before: finely ground mixes of the island’s most toothsome vegetables – purple arwi and green mouroungue, cambaré-beti and wilted songe.
Several photographs from this period of Deeti’s life have survived, including a couple of beautiful silver-gelatin daguerrotypes. In one of them, taken in the Chowkey, Deeti is in the foreground, still seated in her pus-pus, the feet of which are resting on the floor. She is wearing a sari, but unlike the other women in the frame, she has allowed the ghungta to drop from her head, baring her hair, which is a startling shade of white. Her sari’s anchal hangs over her shoulder, weighted with a massive bunch of keys, the symbol of her continuing mastery of the Fami’s affairs. Her face is dark and round, lined with deep cracks: the daguerrotype is detailed enough to give the viewer the illusion of being able to feel the texture of her skin, which is that of crumpled, tough, weatherworn leather. Her hands are folded calmly in her lap, but there is nothing reposeful about the tilt of her body: her lips are pursed tightly together and she is squinting fiercely at the camera. One of her eyes, dimmed by cataracts, reflects the light blankly back to the lens, but the gaze ofthe other is sharp and piercing, the colour of the pupil a distinctive grey.
The entrance to the shrine’s inner chambers can be seen over her shoulder: it is no more than a tilted fissure in the cliffside, so narrow that it seems impossible that a cavern could lie hidden behind it. In the background, a paunchy man in a dhoti can be seen, trying to chivvy a brood of children into forming a line so that they can follow Deeti inside.
This too was an inviolable part of the ritual: it always fell to Deeti to make sure that the youngest were the first to perform the puja, so they could eat before the rest. With a cane in one hand and a branch of candles in another, she would usher all the young Colvers – chutkas and chutkis, laikas and laikis – straight through the hall-like cavern that led to the inner sanctum. The famished youngsters would hurry after her, scarcely glancing at the painted walls of the cave’s outer chamber, with its drawings and graffiti. They would run to the part of the shrine that Deeti called her ‘puja-room’: a small hollow in the rock, hidden away at the back. If the shrine had been an ordinary temple, this would...
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
multi-volumes of research into a thin fictional package
By PracAdemic
Amitav Ghosh really fell into the historical fiction trap of cramming multi-volumes of research into a rather flimsy fictional package. This book felt both sprawling and claustrophobic at the same time - much of it spent in cramped and not-so cramped quarters of the different characters that lived in Canton. I would really love to know why Ghosh sidelined his compelling characters from Sea of Poppies and then inflicted a character like Robin Chinnery on us for endless pages of exposition through letters. Characters like Paulette and Neel, who faced huge obstacles and were heroic in Sea of Poppies, lost all sense of agency in River of Smoke. While the topic of the opium trade and the lead up to the first Opium War is inherently dramatic, he unfortunately drowned it in a sea of words. This reads like an early draft where he just needed to get all the material down and then he lost interest and didn't do the revising and tightening that would make it compelling. He, of course, can write beautifully and there are moments of great poignancy (e.g. where an opium addled character hallucinates his lost love) and outrageousness (e.g. the blatant hypocricy of the British opium merchants). I hope volume 3 lives up to the promise of volume 1.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Not Quite Pounds Sterling
By Clay Reynolds
Ghosh is a very clever wordsmith, and his knowledge of slang, colloquialism, and epithet of the period extends to several languages; he also has an extensive knowledge of maritime technology, geopolitics, and other elements of the historical background; however, the story basically skims along on the surface. Characters don't develop and it's hard to become engaged with them on any but the most perfunctory level. This second volume of the trilogy is about 75% backstory of characters who were either introduced in the first volume, or who are new to the story here. What actually happens in this volume occurs in the last 150-200 pages, but it's drawn out and artificially delayed. Much of the language seems to be neologistic, although it's possible that these were real words and expressions at the time. I have six dictionaries of historical terms and slang, though, and I found few of them. He's very funny, and his depictions of the British Raj are outsized and appropriately caricatured, as are his stereotypical Indians and Chinese characters. After reading roughly 1200 pages of this, though, I've decided to take a break before finishing the trilogy. There's a lot of tedium here, and a quality line-editor could have streamlined much of the prose for him.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
If You Love a Great Story, Languages and History, Read This Now
By NC Goodwin
River of Smoke continues Amitav Ghosh' fascinating historical, mutli-cultural, multi-lingual story. This is the second book of The Ibis trilogy. I strongly recommend reading the first book, Sea of Poppies, first. I made the mistake of reading River of Smoke first, went back and read Sea of Poppies, then re-read River of Smoke. I don't know if I've ever read a book twice within a month's time and enjoyed it immensely both times! I am about to begin the final book in the trilogy, Flood of Fire, and I can't wait.
Because of the mulit-lingual aspect of these books, they are not easy reading. If you decide to skip the words that you don't understand or can't pronounce, you will miss a lot. Work on it and work it out. There is a glossary at the end of Sea of Poppies which is very helpful.
I couldn't put these stunning books down. I learned a lot, laughed a lot, cried a little and was consistently amazed.
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