Amitav Ghosh born in Kolkata, studied at the University of Delhi and Oxford, and has taught in a number of Institutions. His two latest novels carry us deep inside the opium trade in the 1830s. River of Smoke is the second volume of a proposed Ibis trilogy, the first of which is the “Sea of Poppies”, published in 2008, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2008. It focuses on the Opium Wars of the mid-19th century. His novel is not a rage, but a panoramic history, rich in period detail and full of believable characters.
River of Smoke follows the story through to Canton in China, where the opium is sold. It talks about how opium is sold illegally by the traders mostly British and how the Chinese authorities are trying to prevent imports of this deadly drug, which has made the Chinese population addicted to this drug.
Amitav’s novel takes you back in time when there was chaos in China over the opium import. He hold you spellbound with the details of the period and explains the life stories of characters he introduces, that you really are transported to that era. He pours fierce energy when he talks about plotlines as the action shifts from the Indian Ocean to Canton’s 19th century waterways.
The primary focus of the novel is Bahram Modi, a wealthy Parsi opium trader from Bombay, his estranged half-Chinese son Ah Fatt, the Parsi community where he's a lowly son-in-law in a superior family; and in his relations with the Canton foreign traders. He is projected as a far more sympathetic character than his fellow traders.
The story also talks about the orphaned amateur botanist Paulette who is accompanying a Cornish botanist to China on an expedition to track down the mythical golden camellia, a rare flower and a motley collection of others in pursuit of romance and riches. All struggle to cope with their losses—and, for some, unimaginable freedoms—in the alleys and crowded nineteenth-century Canton.
The novel is a Pandora of curiosities, crowded with items that hold a story of their own. River of Smoke, book two in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy, transports you into another mesmerizing dream world is another masterpiece from his stable. What it does offer is an alternate view of history — the age of the Opium War and the history of the East.
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