We’re of to Canton – River of Smoke – Part II of Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy

I praised Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies a couple of years back when it came out – the first in a planned trilogy, called the Ibis Trilogy, that would cover India, China and the world on the eve of the Opium Wars. Though some were critical of Ghosh’s pidgen English I enjoyed it (and blogged on it too) – even he exaggerated or invented a bit then so what – the trilogies are novels, fiction, inventions. You’re allowed to make stuff up.

And now the second in the trilogy is available – River of Smoke – and the action moves from India and the Indian Ocean to China, Canton (Guangzhou for you modern types) and the South China Seas. Typical Ghosh saga like tale telling and more of that luxurious and fun pidgen English. Ghosh has done his research on the old Canton factories too – this is the best novel around the Canton Factories at this time since Timothy Mo’s An Insular Possession.

As usual publishers blurb below – can’t spoil those occasional reviewing gigs!

In September 1838 a storm blows up on the Indian Ocean and the Ibis, a ship carrying a consignment of convicts and indentured laborers from Calcutta to Mauritius, is caught up in the whirlwind. When the seas settle, five men have disappeared – two lascars, two convicts and one of the passengers. Did the same storm upend the fortunes of those aboard the Anahita, an opium carrier heading towards Canton? And what fate befell those aboard the Redruth, a sturdy two-masted brig heading East out of Cornwall? Was it the storm that altered their course or were the destinies of these passengers at the mercy of even more powerful forces?

On the grand scale of an historical epic, River of Smoke follows its storm-tossed characters to the crowded harbors of China.  There, despite efforts of the emperor to stop them, ships from Europe and India exchange their cargoes of opium for boxes of tea, silk, porcelain and silver. Among them are Bahram Modi, a wealthy Parsi opium merchant out of Bombay, his estranged half-Chinese son Ah Fatt, the orphaned Paulette and a motley collection of others whose pursuit of romance, riches and a legendary rare flower have thrown together.  All struggle to cope with their losses – and for some, unimaginable freedoms – in the alleys and crowded waterways of 19th century Canton.  As transporting and mesmerizing as an opiate induced dream, River of Smoke will soon be heralded as a masterpiece of twenty-first century literature.