These characters and others are thrown together on a large ship sailing from the eastern shores of India, across the Indian Ocean, towards the Mauritius (“Mareech”) Islands, and a running theme is that this ship, often likened to a giant womb, becomes a vessel for rebirth.

Some background: Sea of Poppies is set in 1838, near the start of the Opium Wars between Britain and China, and its cast of characters include a strong-willed young widow from a village in northern Bihar, an American freedman born of a white father and a Negro slavewoman, a gomusta/agent who believes that his life’s work is to build a temple to a mother-goddess, a dispossessed Raja wrongly convicted of forgery, and a feisty orphan of European origin. There’s much to discuss about this book, which has many Ghosh trademarks – the depth of scholarship, the perpetually enquiring mind, his curiosity about races of people and their personal histories – but one thing I found especially interesting is the colourful speech patterns that occur throughout it. I’ve been reading and enjoying Sea of Poppies, the first installment in Amitav Ghosh’s highly anticipated Ibis trilogy (the announcement of which caused lots of excitement in Indian publishing circles last year).

Sea of poppies review