Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh (2015, Part Three of The Ibis Trilogy, 624 pages)

Works in The Ibis Trilogy

Sea of Poppies - published 4/2008, read 4/2012

River of Smoke - Published 6/2012, read 2/2015

Flood of Fire - Published 3/2015, read 5/2017

Flood of Fire of Fire is the final installment in The Ibis Trilogy by Amitav Ghosh.  The Trilogy is set largely in the Bay of Bengal region of India and in the Canton region of China.  It is historical fiction on a grand scale, over 1600 pages in total.  It's center of focus is the impact of the opium trade on India and China, focusing on the period leading up to the first opium war, 1839 to 1842.

The ship The Ibis, was once used in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  A former first mate, Zachary, his mother was an slave owned by his white father, serves as kind of a unifying character.

Book One of The Ibis Trilogy focuses on the impact of the opium trade on people living in the Bengali region of India, near the Bay of Bengal.

Book Two focuses more on the areas of China where opium entered the country, near Canton.  It shows the destruction the drug reaped on the Chinese.

Book Three details the economic aspects of the opium trade and very excitingly depicts naval and land battles between the English and the Chinese.  It goes into a lot of fascinating detail about The British East India Company, which had a very large army.  We learned what is was like to be an English officer, an Indian sepoy in the service of the army, the wife of a top British officer, a servant of an officer and much more.  I think anyone interested in 19th century India, English Colonial activity, the history of the drug trade, or the British East India company will love this book. As The Flood of Fire opens Zachary is in a bit of trouble.  The Ibis has stopped in Bengal and cannot sail for months.  The owner cannot or will not support him while the boat is being repaired.  He is trained as a ship carpenter and is offered a job restoring a Junk to be used as a pleasure craft by a high ranking East India Company officer.  In a weird, ok some will find this unintentionally funny, I think, segment the owner's wife observes him one day, through a telescope, polishing a brass handle.  She notices he often does this and becomes convinced he was engaging frequent masterbation, considered by the woman a great sin.  She approaches him, at first he has no idea what she is talking about, and offers him a brochure on dealing with this "vice".  Soon they become sexually involved, a horrible social offense for both.  During their sexual encounters they speak in pidgin English, I found this over done and silly almost.  Zachary becomes very involved in the opium trade and in naval battles.

Sea of Fire also focuses on an Indian servant of a British officer as well as the widow of an Indian woman, her family was rich from the opium trade, who discovers her husband had a long time mistress, a Chinese woman,  and a son in Canton.  There is a lot of drama surrounding her trip to Canton to meet her husband's son, now a young man. Characters in the previous two books, like Paulette, reappear in Book Three.

To me the best thing, and I'm enthralled by this aspect, was the historical details, the many terms I learned, the inside look at the opium trade and the British East India Company, life in Bengali, and the pervasive corruption and evil of the drug trade.  We also see how the drug trade helped make Hong Kong a great city.

Some say the characters in Book Three are not as well developed as those in the first two segments and I guess I agree.

Don't consider reading Flood of Fire  without reading the first two installments.
To read it in full is a big commitment of reading time.  I was able to recall much of the first two segments by reading my posts on them.  My reading of the work was  over a five year period as I waited for parts two and three to be published.  In the interim I read the author's very good work set in mid 19th century Burma, The Glass Palace.

I strongly endorse this Trilogy to lovers of historical fiction, especially those interested in the time and place the book covers. The work has a kind of old fashioned feel to it which I relished.

Ghosh spent over ten years working on these books, you can see tremendous research behind the details.



M


Official Site of Amitav Ghosh

 My Prior Posts on Amitav Ghosh

The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh (2001. 598 pages)

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My thanks to Max u for the provision of an Amazon Gift Card which allowed me to acquire this book. 

A few years ago I read, really liked and posted upon  the first two installments of Amitav Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy, The Sea of Poppies and The River of Smoke.  The final book in the trilogy Flood of Fire  came out earlier this year.  I want to read it for sure but I will wait until the price drops from $14.95, which is too high for an E Book of a novel.

I did not really have any plans concerning reading more of the works of Ghosh until I received notice that his set in Burma historical novel, The Glass Palace,  covering the period around 1890 to 1990 was temporarily marked down from $11.95 to $1.95.  I like historical fiction set in South and South East Asia and I felt this would be a good book so I acquired it.  I was right.  It certainly was.

The book reminded me of the just published masterwork by Anne Proux, Barkskin in that it is very much about the logging industry, in this case Burmese teak, and is a multi-generational family saga.  As the story opens, our lead character is a deck hand on a riverboat.  The boat is badly damaged and the young man, maybe fiveteen, is told to go ashore and find work for the thirty days it takes to repair the boat.  He is an Indian, looked down upon by many Burmese and is directed to a food shop of an Indian lady who hires him and gives him a place to live.  He decides to stay on and he meets a man who will change his life and play a big role in his future.  He will become the father he never had. 

There is a lot of very interesting material in The Glass Palace about the teak logging industry.  In one fascinating and quite gruesome section we learn how anthrax impacts and ultimately kills elephants. Moving the huge logs down river is hard dangerous work.  

We learn a good bit about the Burmese royal family, displaced by the British and sent into exhile in India when the British take over.  

India soldiers serving in the British army play a big role in the story.  Indians see this as a mark of family honor but the Burmese see them as contemible slaves set to be kill for the English.

There are a lot of personal entanglements and romances in the novel, sometimes they worked, sometimes they did not.

The segments involving war against the Japanese were very exciting.  

If you like first rate historical fiction, especially set in the Indian Subcontinent, then I 

 endorse this book.especially if you can get it for $1.95.  

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and the first two volumes of The Ibis Trilogy; Sea of Poppies, and River of Smoke.

The Circle of Reason was awarded France’s Prix Médicis in 1990, and The Shadow Lines won two prestigious Indian prizes the same year, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar. The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke award for 1997 and The Glass Palace won the International e-Book Award at the Frankfurt book fair in 2001. In January 2005 The Hungry Tide was awarded the Crossword Book Prize, a major Indian award. His novel, Sea of Poppies (2008) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2008 and was awarded the Crossword Book Prize and the India Plaza Golden Quill Award. 

Amitav Ghosh’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and he has served on the Jury of the Locarno Film Festival (Switzerland) and the Venice Film Festival (2001). Amitav Ghosh’s essays have been published in The New Yorker, The New Republic and The New York Times. His essays have been published by Penguin India (The Imam and the Indian) and Houghton Mifflin USA (Incendiary Circumstances). He has taught in many universities in India and the USA, including Delhi University, Columbia, Queens College and Harvard.  In January 2007 he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest honours, by the President of India. In 2010, Amitav Ghosh was awarded honorary doctorates by Queens College, New York, and the Sorbonne, Paris. Along with Margaret Atwood, he was also a joint winner of a Dan David Award for 2010. In 2011 he was awarded the International Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis Festival in Montreal.   From amitavghosh.com 

Mel u

River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh

River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh (2011, 528 pages)

Most of my blogging and reading time since March 11 has been devoted to my Irish Short Story Week Year Two Project, which will for sure end on July 1.  I  am continuing to read other longer works and as I finish them I will post on them and where I can I will try to relate what I read to Irish Short Stories.  In the case of a massive novel set around India in the mid 19th century the connection is very simple, both Ireland and India were under the yoke of the British Empire.  The similarities and differences in how the English ruled and shaped the two culture is a huge topic.  By understanding the British rule in one part of the empire our understanding can help us understand the other area.

River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh (India) is the sequel  to his 2009 Sea of Poppies, which I read and posted on in January of 2010.  I liked The Sea of Poppies a lot.  It is set in the late 1830s, starting out in Calcutta and on the banks of the Ganges River.   This work has a kind of old fashioned feel to it.   The completed trilogy will run to over 1500 pages.    There are a large number of characters, there is a lot of historical detail, there are a lot of unfamiliar terms used from slang of the period relating to the opium trade, seafaring and caste issues, and there are multiple plot threads open.    Most of the characters have hidden aspects in their past.   We see the near highest levels of wealth and the depth of poverty.    Most of Sea of Poppies is devoted to introducing the people who will be on the ship the Ibis (the trilogy is called The Ibis Trilogy) when  it sails to Mauritius, a very remote isolated island in the Indian Ocean.   


River of Smoke is an odd kind of sequel.   When Sea of Poppies came to a close we were left at a cliffhanging place in the narrative and the lives of the central characters, they are  on a ship during a terrible storm in the Indian ocean.   River of Smoke focuses not so much on the people on the one ship but on those in two other ships that are also caught up in the storm.


The book is really almost a history lesson about the effects of the Opium trade and about 100 + other things.   The author has a PhD in cultural anthropology from Oxford and there is a huge amount to be learned from his book.   I was fascinated to read the description of plant hunters in China.   


I will say this book was not as exciting as Sea of Poppies but if you would enjoy a massive historical novel set in India and China in the middle of the 19th century, I do not think you will find a better researched, more information packed and better written pair of books than Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke.     


I guess the final work in the trilogy will be out in 2013 or 2014 and I am sure Ghosh will tie all of the loose ends together in the final novel.

Mel u

"Sea of Poppies" by Amitav Ghosh

A Neo-Victorian Tale of India

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (2008, 469 pages) is part one of a trilogy.   Part two is scheduled to be published in 2010.   Sea of Poppies was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2008.

The novel is set in the late 1830s, starting out in Calcutta and on the banks of the Ganges River.   This work has a kind of old fashioned feel to it.   The completed trilogy will run to over 1500 pages.    There are a large number of characters, there is a lot of historical detail, there are a lot of unfamiliar terms used from slang of the period relating to the opium trade, seafaring and caste issues, and there are multiple plot threads open.    Most of the characters have hidden aspects in their past.   We see the near highest levels of wealth and the depth of poverty.    Most of Sea of Poppies is devoted to introducing the people who will be on the ship the Isib (the trilogy is called The Ibis Trilogy) when  it sails to Mauritius, a very remote isolated island in the Indian Ocean.   (This is  journey of near 3000 kilometers.)

Sea of Poppies has a lot of characters, enough to fill a Dickens novel.   We learn the stories of each of the main characters and what lead up to them boarding the Ibis.   A trip of this length was very hard and dangerous in this period as the book well shows us.  Here are some of the main characters.

Deeti-a young widow who was rescued from Suttee when her husband dies by Kalua, the local village Ox man.    In order to escape from her in laws (who wanted her burned as tradition required) she and Kalua commit themselves to become indentured servants to the owners of the Ibis.  

Zachary Reed is an American, his mother was a slave and his father was the owner of his mother.    The Ibis was at one time a slave carrying ship and Zachary has been on the ship since it was commissoned.    The ship is really the only home he has ever known.   Like all the characters, there are secrets about his past yet to be revealed.   (I think this is part of the old fashioned feel of the novel.   At anytime someone who seems to be a convict might be revealed to be a prince placed in chains by his enemies.)

Neel Halder-a wealthy Rajah falsely tried and convicted of forgery.   Neel was sentenced to be transported to Mauritius as a convict and stripped of all his property.    His family has to go live with one of his chief servants.   In a telling moment in the narrative, Neel realizes that before then he did not even know his servant had his own house.  

Ah Fatt-another convict being transported.    He is an opium addict.    When Neel is in prison waiting to be transported he learns that a transported convict has the lowest caste in the prison system.   We see Neel coping with the incredible transformations in his life, from wealthy Rajah to convict.    My guess is Ah Fatt for sure has a mysterious past and is not what he seems to be but we will have to wait to find out.

Paulette is French born teenager who is now an orphan.   She is on the run from her guardians as they want to marry her off to a very old man.

There is a lot in this book.    We get a good look at the pernicious influence of  opium in India.   We see how it is traded, how the poppies are turned into opium and how it destroys traditional culture.    We learn a lot of nautical slang.   We learn many expressions for occupations in the period.   We learn a lot about the caste system.   We learn a lot about life inside an Indian prison.  (His prison scenes are really well done and can compare with classic Victorian depictions of prison life.)     We get a good idea of how it might have felt to live in the period.    We see the food, family relations, brothels, and clothing.   We get a strong feel for the extreme diversity and richness of Indian Culture.    We see the effects of colonialism.   ( As I  read this work I was reminded  of Edmund Burke who argued that Indian should be set free as it was in fact a much older and in many ways richer culture than England)

I like Sea of Poppies a lot.   It made be realize how little I know of Indian history.   There are wonderful set pieces in the book, miniature narratives brilliantly done.   The book does have an old fashioned feel.   By this I mean it seems like it was written for a time when readers were happy to read what will eventually be a 1500 page character rich trilogy.    It makes use of many words which will be unfamiliar to the reader who is not a scholar of the period.   (In an appendix to the book, Ghosh indicates the authoritative sources for his use of expressions.   My guess he has got his history and terms correct.)    Ghosh takes his time building up to the start of the voyage.   He is in no hurry.    We know, shades of  The Count of Monte Christo, that vengeance will be dealt out eventually.    Sea of Poppies  ends on a cliff  hanger

Amitav Ghosh was born January 1, 1956 in Kolkata, India.  He has a PhD in social anthropology from Oxford.    He has written six novels as well as four collections of essays on a diverse range of topics.  

I enjoyed this book a lot and I learned some interesting things from it.   Some might want a bit faster paced book, I think.   I will for sure read the next book in the Ibis Trilogy.   (The Sea of Poppies does leave us hanging.)   If I come upon other historical novel by Ghosh there is a good chance  I will buy them.   I looked at Ghosh's other works on Goodreads.com and, of course, I want to read them all but I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to my next Ghosh or South Asian Novel-thanks


I am reading this work for the following challenges

South Asia Challenge
Global Challenge
Read Before I Die Challenge
Historical Fiction Challenge
New Authors Challenge (new to you)

Mel u