Though life is far from fair, with some among us blessed at birth with advantages of privilege and talent others are not, there can be no doubt that the average human has far more access to the halls of power than he did at any other time in the history of our species. Yes, many formidable barriers remain, barriers that must eventually be destroyed, but these impediments are, for the most part, surmountable and certainly bear few similarities to the soul-crushing nature of the rigid hierarchies that characterized societies only a century ago. Where we largely have access to the ladder of social mobility which allows us to dream of climbing to a better tomorrow, for ourselves and our children, our predecessors were often locked, by dint of birth and race, into roles they could not escape until death. They could not rise to lead their nations, or even to hold some sway over them. That was not within their cast. It is into this world of fixed outcomes and ceaseless toil that Mr. Ghosh plunges us. It is a world he has drawn exquisitely well.
The year is 1838 and India is firmly under the sway of the British Empire. English merchants and the sea-captains in their hire, command, in the name of their monarch, the fidelity of half the world. Like the ancient Romans from whom they are in part descended, their noteworthy citizens have the power to elevate or dash the fortunes of their colonial subjects enchained to them by imperial bands that will not be broken for at least a century. But though the British hold more sway over the world than any other single, contemporary power, their empire is not without problems. For while they can force vast nations like India and China to heel, they cannot always compel them to trade.
Though this is less of a problem with the thoroughly suborned India, whose leading citizens have been mostly co-opted by British coin, China remains a persistent thorn in the side of the English. Dismissed as inferior upstarts by the self-sufficient Chinese, mercantile Britain finds itself at a loss. For while they desire all the tea and silk China has to offer, they have nothing to offer China in turn, a sobering and humiliating reality which compels an increasingly desperate Britania to force upon the Chinese people large quantities of Indian opium in hopes of addicting them. If they are successful in transforming China into a nation of addicts, they will have created for themselves a market for a good that they have in abundance, a good that can complete the circuit of trade that threatened to deprive them of their cherished oriental delights.
Into this despicable business sails the Ibis, a schooner of American construction which comes to India for a refit at the lowest ebb of the opium trade. Its British owner, Mr. Burnham, has decided to recommission the ship for use as a ferry for indentured workers, the first shipment of which he soon dispatches to the nearby island of Mauritius. As the ship braves the seas, on route to its destination, its crew and its passengers are confronted with all manner of plights, both internal and external, which have the power to snatch away their meager lives. This is the Ibis. This is the Sea of Poppies.
It is difficult to imagine a novel being imbued with greater elegance of language and epicness of plot than Mr. Ghosh's sprawling and majisterial Sea of Poppies. Constructed around four well-drawn, primary characters, an American sailor, an indentured Indian woman, a disgraced rajah and a runaway house girl, the author manages to both flesh out a dozen secondary characters and inject each of them with grace and menace. More over, he accomplishes this while firmly establishing the novel's greatest virtue, the immersive world of 19th century India which, here, is rendered in shockingly glorious detail. The research necessary to properly enliven such a rich and exotic environment boggles the mind. This is, for a literary epicure, a rare delicacy.
For all its vividness, however, Sea of Poppies is nearly stillborn. Mr. Ghosh risks losing the patience of his readers by asking them to bear with him as he devotes more than half of his 550 pages to establishing his leading lights, both their pains and their personalities. And while this meandering meticulousness is wonderfully paid off at the novel's conclusion, arriving there is somewhat arduous.
Nonetheless, Mr. Ghosh's novel is a delight to the senses such as comes along once in a great while. It, like the opium that saturates it, must be savored when smoked. For who knows when next such a quality product will come. (4/5 Stars)
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