Summary
one does not need the impressive bibliography of sources at the end to be struck
by the wealth of period detail the author commands. His descriptions bring a lost
world to life, from the evocatively imagined opium factory, the intricacies of
women's costumes and the lovingly enumerated fare on the opulent dining tables
of the era, to the richly detailed descriptions of the Ibis and its journey. At times,
Sea of Poppies reads like a cross between an Indian Gone with the Wind and a
Victorian novel of manners. And yet Ghosh has managed a sharp reversal of
perspective. His ship, with the author's fine feel for nautical niceties, sails in
Joseph Conrad territory, through waters since romanticized by the likes of James
Clavell. But whereas those writers and so many others placed the white man at
the center of their narratives, Ghosh relegates his British colonists to the margins
of his story, giving pride of place to the neglected subjects of the imperial
enterprise: colonialism's impoverished, and usually colored, victimshis novel is
also a delight. I can't wait to see what happens to these laborers and seamen,
the defrocked raja and the transgendered mystic in the next volume.
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