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The Hungry Tide

3.83 of 5 stars 3.83 · rating details · 4,869 ratings · 437 reviews

A contemporary story of adventure, history, and identity by acclaimed author Amitav Ghosh.

Off the easternmost corner of India, in the Bay of Bengal, lies the immense labyrinth of tiny islands known as the Sundarbans, where settlers live in fear of drowning tides and man-eating tigers. Piya Roy, a young American marine biologist of Indian descent, arrives in this lush, trea...more

Paperback, 352 pages

Published June 7th 2006 by Mariner Books (first published 2004)

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Apr 08, 2008 Foodie rated it 5 of 5 stars

If Shadow Lines enthralled you, Amitav Ghosh's latest masterpiece, the Hungry Tide, will sweep you off your feet, and into the precarious waters of the Sundarbans.In the typical Ghosh style, the narrative moves fluidly between past and present. You will be transported into the mindset of the superstitious yet brave folk, who have adapted themselves to the constant ebb and flow of the tide and are living in continuous fear of the Bengal tigers. The tide begins to turn with the advent of two seeke...more

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Mar 20, 2013 Osho rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: around-the-world, 2008

Bangladesh

A chance meeting between a young American woman and a local businessman, and their subsequent divergences and intersections, form the core strands of this novel, set in what is today rural Bangladesh. The story's two strands intertwine like the rivers in Bangladesh's tide country, parallelism that is clearly deliberate. Ghosh evokes both characters and landscape very well, and skillfully sustains both overtly and subtle tensions throughout. Ghosh does a good job of resolving the basic...more

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Apr 28, 2012 Mamta rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It was an interesting but not a phenomenal, and in some part, even a disappointing read. The characters could have been fleshed out far far more.....it was almost as if the language barrier kept even the reader from understanding Fokir to any measurable depth. The relationships between the various characters were left largely unexplored. I wish that the human interactions/histories had been dealt with the same passion as the geology of the Sunderbans. The storms that shaped the lives of the peop...more

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Dec 26, 2007 Jessica rated it 3 of 5 stars

I picked this up on whim when I was in City Lights in SF. This is a story about an American-born Indian researcher who returns to her ancestral Bengal to study river dolphins in the Sundarbans. Three stars for the unbelievable descriptions of the world's biggest mangrove forest and its denizens (crabs, bengal tigers, and of course, river dolphins) and for using the story to explore conflicts between poverty and environmentalism. Negative points for the overly stereotyped and underdeveloped chara...more

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Jan 03, 2009 Stephen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have mixed feelings about "The Hungry Tide." Amitav Ghosh tells a large story firmly set in a particular place--the Mangrove-covered islands in the estuary of the Ganges River. The story has everything: love, class-difference, political conflict, natural and man-made catastrophes, and, of course, dolphins, tigers, and crocodiles (dangerous encounters with the latter two, friendly encounters with the first). And that's the problem. The story is contrived and contains dialogue that frequently do...more

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Apr 06, 2013 Satarupa Chakraborty rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This my second Amitav Ghosh read after "The Glass Palace" and I must say my opinion on the author has remained the same, for better and worse.
Ghosh, in my opinion, is an amazing story teller. His prowess as an author however, is questionable. To that extent, I don't read Ghosh to drown in a sea of imagination or literary beauty. In fact,I plough through Ghosh's work for the sheer plot that I know every time is sensational.
Chronicling is not one of Ghosh's strong suit. The story is presented in a...more This my second Amitav Ghosh read after "The Glass Palace" and I must say my opinion on the author has remained the same, for better and worse.
Ghosh, in my opinion, is an amazing story teller. His prowess as an author however, is questionable. To that extent, I don't read Ghosh to drown in a sea of imagination or literary beauty. In fact,I plough through Ghosh's work for the sheer plot that I know every time is sensational.
Chronicling is not one of Ghosh's strong suit. The story is presented in a very matter-of-fact manner. In fact, description is barely there, just about enough to carry on recounting the events. There were also times in the book, where Ghosh's excessive platitudes on dolphins made me want to skip an occasional paragraph. or two. The book however, did have its share of random nuggets of unexpected information. I know odd little things about dolphins, crabs and bengali sweets. That part was fun to know and retain.
The other thing about Ghosh's writing is that its always characterized with a lot of parellel side stories, which contribute to the main plot. They are however, not seamless at all. So sometimes its difficult to keep track of things where one second you're inside Piya's head learning about the habitat of Gangetic dolphins and the next second you're thrown thirty years back in time reading the contents of a dead man's journal.
The third point in my opinion, is language. It is very misleading. The prose is deceivingly simple consisting of simple compound sentences...and then suddenly you come across one very archaic word for which you have to stop everything and consult the thesaurus.
And here is an odd example:
" At the center of the village was a maidan, an open space not quite geometrical enough to be termed a square."
Had I personally not known what a "maidan" was, I would have had a hard time guessing he was talking about a field.
So yes, language and editing definitely could have been better.
But despite these drawbacks, I could not put the book down. The plot was just that great. It was so well thought out, that every time I read Ghosh's books, I feel as if he was talking from actual memories, not just spinning stories from his imagination.
Background information on all the characters were ..well, not there. But the events themselves were so vivid and so human, that the characters fleshed themselves out in their interactions with each other and their circumstances. And they demanded the reader's emotion.
As the story went on, I could imagine looking at the situation through Piya's eyes. My opinions on the two other characters Kanai and Fokir were the same as hers. I underwent the same emotions as she did when her feelings on these two people took shape and then changed over the course of events.The characters grew along with the events and their sheer human-ness make the story seem so real. And for that alone, I would grant all of Ghosh's books a permanent place in my reading list. He is not , an elegant writer, I think, but he is one helluva story teller.(less)

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Apr 02, 2013 Dark-Draco rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-without-genre

This is really not the sort of book I would chose for myself - but it was sent to me as part of a surprise package with one of my book clubs - and I'm really glad they did. I enjoyed it immensely and devoured the lot over a handful of sessions.

Although on the surface of it, this is the tale of two people, there are many more threads interwoven throughout. Piyali Roy comes to the tide country to study the elusive river dolphin. Kanai Dutt returns there to visit his aunt and collect the papers lef...more

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Jan 21, 2013 Siddhartha rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: concentrated-reading-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This was the book that made me watch out for any new work of Amitav Ghosh. Here's why!

It is a novel set in Sundarbans...or ‘Bhatir desh’ or tide country as the writer Amitava Ghosh calls it.
It was a great read….the language was almost lyrical…his description of the ways of water and land in sunderbans is poetic. You could almost feel the salty smell of the water and the whiff of the moist air of the land as you are reading.
Amitava Ghosh has weaved an awe inspiring tale of the resilience of human...more This was the book that made me watch out for any new work of Amitav Ghosh. Here's why!

It is a novel set in Sundarbans...or ‘Bhatir desh’ or tide country as the writer Amitava Ghosh calls it.
It was a great read….the language was almost lyrical…his description of the ways of water and land in sunderbans is poetic. You could almost feel the salty smell of the water and the whiff of the moist air of the land as you are reading.
Amitava Ghosh has weaved an awe inspiring tale of the resilience of human spirit. The narrative moves between past and present with parallels emerging inconspicuously. There is a special place to the tiger, the man eating kind and the inseparable ways in which it is linked with the lives of the peoples of the tide country. About the legend of bon bibi who the locals rever as protector against the tigers, crocodiles and tides in the times of storm.
The principal protagonists are Priya, a foreign bred Indian cetologist, who comes to sunderbans to study the rare dolphins in the water system, Kanai, a suave Delhi businessman with a past in the area who is on his second visit to his Aunt who is a social server in the area and Fokir, a local fisherman who Priya hires to guide her and moina, fokir’s intelligent wife. The description of cetology and the ways of dolphins is very thorough. The part about Priya’s experience as a wandering cetologist with a south eastern man is good. Another part where Priya describes why she is uncomfortable speaking Bengali, her native tounge, revealing her deepest , unpleasant memories of the language is amazing.
Parallelly runs another narrative, with Kanai’s uncle Nirmal, Kusum, a local girl and Horen, another local fisherman and Fokir’s mentor as the principal actors. Kanai visits his aunt and uncle as a boy and doesn’t like the tide country very much. Nirmal is an idealist who is forced to settle in the tide country with his wife Neelima because his radical views could be trouble in Calcutta. Neelima takes up social service and starts an NGO which operates an hospital among other things in the tide country. Nirmal dies mysteriously following an evacuation by police of the settlers from Bangladesh from one of the islands part of the tiger reserve. He leaves Kanai some of his papers which are found many years after his death. Thus, kanai’s second visit materializes.
Back to the present, Kanai accompanies priya and fokir on Horen’s boat on their exploration. How the exploration brings out the different shades of personality in each of them, how they agree and disagree with each other and finally understand each other, how Kanai finally manages to connect to his uncle’s ideas, how the individuals gather themselves after shattering experiences and about how life goes on in general.
Amitav Ghosh’s research on the subject of cetology and the ecosystem of sunderbans is exceptional. But it is the characters that steal the show. Also, there is an underlying message that nature is supreme and man nothing in the face of nature’s fury, which turned out prophetic in the occurance of Tsunami.
In the end it’s a great story set in a breathtaking background of sunderbans, combining history, myth and legends of the place with wonderful imagination and narrative prowess. A must read.(less)

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Jan 01, 2013 Stephanie A. rated it 2 of 5 stars

The tl;dr version is "the people & plot are boring but it has really pretty imagery, and also wildlife." The full version appears below:

I would have liked this even less if there hadn't been so many animals involved. India does not generally strike me as a place of intrigue. But on the bright side, the main character is a wildlife biologist so they are mentioned a fair amount. At least, that's what my blog post from 2008 says; I don't remember anything about it except tigers. The essay I wro...more The tl;dr version is "the people & plot are boring but it has really pretty imagery, and also wildlife." The full version appears below:

I would have liked this even less if there hadn't been so many animals involved. India does not generally strike me as a place of intrigue. But on the bright side, the main character is a wildlife biologist so they are mentioned a fair amount. At least, that's what my blog post from 2008 says; I don't remember anything about it except tigers. The essay I wrote for class on this novel was, as far as I know, not particularly great, but according to my opening paragraph:

"Although far from an anthropomorphic novel, Amitav Gosh turns the region’s distinctive wildlife into central characters, and in doing so demonstrates that settings can play as active a role as speaking individuals in plot development. (...) The animals are mentioned largely as generalized groups rather than individuals, and somewhat more like embellishments of the scenery than characters, yet as groups they are crucial to all major turning points in the story."

There are connections to be made about how the dolphins represent innocence and cohesiveness as a unit, while tigers are hostile loners. They take even longer to make their physical presence known, constantly referenced as a threat but never seen outright, becoming an absent center. And I guess somewhere in there I was supposed to find political commentary, since I mentioned of the ending, (view spoiler)

In conclusion, "the animals in The Hungry Tide illuminate a sidebar world of silent influence, the events in their lives providing the framework for the more central human figures to follow. The author’s primary purpose in including such vivid descriptions of wildlife is to enrich the exotic setting, but he makes them do more, deftly blending together wild and human civilizations and blurring the definition of a standard character."

(less)

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Dec 09, 2012 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, literature-new-old, library

I have been listening to the audio of The Hungry Tide this week while working. I am so sorry it's over. The narrator was very good, which naturally helps, but the language was beautiful, the setting was fascinating and the characters were so real to me that I am still thinking about them. The story is about adaptation, and about the interaction between humans, plants and animals. The author presents an excellent question: Do we have the right to promote conservation efforts in a place where thos...more

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Nov 28, 2012 Palmyrah rated it 1 of 5 stars

I'm sorry to say I could not finish this. I got about a third of the way through. I greatly enjoyed The Calcutta Chromosome and Sea of Poppies and have liked other books by this author, more or less, but this was unbearable. The setting is squalid and hellish, an island half-drowned in the mud of the Ganges delta. The characters did not interest me, and a developing romance between an Indian-American marine biologist and a Bengali fisherman seemed preposterously unlikely, although in fairness I...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Aalap rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have a strange relationship with the books of Amitav Ghosh. Strangely enough, I have never bought one (nor have I stolen one, for that matter). They just appear into my life and disappear once I have finished reading them. This oddness to me is nothing short of a mystery. But I will not bore you with that here. I will simply say that I was 'given' this book by 'fate', as I walked into my hotel room lobby in Kathmandu. Of course, I asked around if it belonged to anyone else, and waited in the l...more

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Mar 04, 2012 Dilip rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The real political story in “The Hungry Tide” is about an incident that happened in Marichjapi, an island in the Sunderbans in West Bengal, where the attempt by a group of Dalit refugees to settle on the island was brutally crushed by the newly elected Communist government in West Bengal. The upper castes in the newly formed Communist government drove out the Dalits from forest land. Their justification was that the land had to be conserved; but it could also be viewed as a land grab. Amitav Gho...more The real political story in “The Hungry Tide” is about an incident that happened in Marichjapi, an island in the Sunderbans in West Bengal, where the attempt by a group of Dalit refugees to settle on the island was brutally crushed by the newly elected Communist government in West Bengal. The upper castes in the newly formed Communist government drove out the Dalits from forest land. Their justification was that the land had to be conserved; but it could also be viewed as a land grab. Amitav Ghosh’s elegant novel has some real history and alludes to this incident, but it’s only a back story in the novel. For the most part, though contemporary political issues like climate change and conservation nip at the story’s edges, this is a gripping read but quite lukewarm about politics
The characters in “The Hungry Tide” come from diverse backgrounds. Kannai, a Delhi businessman is an upper caste Bengali (the Bengali Badhralok , the educated sons of privilege). Sophisticated, urbane and erudite, the economic benefits of globalisation have enriched him and in some sense alienated him from his own family. Piya, an American whose parents migrated from Bengal, is a marine biologist studying cetaceans. The third character is Forkir, an illiterate but sea-savvy fisherman, whose mother was an inhabitant of Marichjapi and died when paramilitary forces blockaded the island. Forkir is the real enigma in the novel, someone who barely speaks but who has an intuitive understanding of the geography and landscape of the Sunderbans. These three characters set out on an expedition where they not only confront the menace of the natural elements, but also their own inner demons.
There is an undercurrent of romance in the relationship between Piya and Forkir. Ghosh explores how we communicate across boundaries that are both cultural and linguistic. Piya is in awe of Forkir’s intuitive powers in tracking the dolphins she’s come to research. Somewhere along the journey, Kannai suggests that her notions about Forkir may end in grief, that she may be idealizing him, imagining him to be something he is not. The realisation that she has elevated Forkir with her own romantic ideas of ecological heroism, dawns on her when Forkir is insensitive to her feelings over a slain tiger. This is a tiger that has terrorized the village but has been trapped in a hut where it is speared to death. Revolted by what she thinks is a gratuitous act of violence, Piya expects Forkir to support her; instead he sides with the villagers. One can see here a point about how western notions of ecological conservation can sometimes marginalise the living habits of remote human populations.
The other relationship of interest is the conflict between Forkir and Kannai. They come from opposite ends of the social spectrum and one senses their conflicting attitudes. The urbane Kannai patronises the illiterate youngster who responds with an audacious aloofness that Kanai perceives as snobbery. Forkir shows no signs of cowering before Kannai’s priviledged upbringing. Things come to a head on one of their expeditions in search of the dolphin where in the confusion of man-eating jungle tigers, crocodiles and an impending storm, Forkir leaves Kannai alone on an island. In fairness, Forkir had half-heartedly offered Kannai a helping hand when the latter tripped and toppled facedown into the squelching mud, but Kannai’s self-pride and upper caste hubris prevent him from accepting Forkir’s offer. Something snaps in him and uncharacteristically he vomits out vile abuse, some of it aimed at Forkir but most of it random.
Ghosh tells a neat story with an interesting denouement, but “The Hungry Tide” isn’t one of his most audacious novels. His palette is too limited here.
(less)

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May 07, 2010 The Super Moop rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This particular four out of five is a qualified four out of five. I certainly did "really like it", as far as the scale for grading these things goes, but, for all that, this book's limitations stand out sharply amongst its many qualities, and I'm not convinced that my own enjoyment of it automatically translates into a wholehearted recommendation.

The bits that grate, then:

Having arrived at this directly from the self-assured Sea of Poppies, I found, to my surprise, that Mr.Ghosh's writing for l...more This particular four out of five is a qualified four out of five. I certainly did "really like it", as far as the scale for grading these things goes, but, for all that, this book's limitations stand out sharply amongst its many qualities, and I'm not convinced that my own enjoyment of it automatically translates into a wholehearted recommendation.

The bits that grate, then:

Having arrived at this directly from the self-assured Sea of Poppies, I found, to my surprise, that Mr.Ghosh's writing for large stretches of this book is dry, almost stilted. While he's as lucid as ever - and one wouldn't expect anything less after Poppies - the language itself is featureless, academic, utilitarian, unsuited to describing these particular people and their particular lives, out of place, uncomfortable and foreign, the exact opposite of another novel I read recently, Brighton Rock by Graham Greene, where the English seems completely at home in its own skin, familiar in its territory, a language from and of Brighton and the best candidate for capturing its nuances and subtleties.

Maybe places only really ever make sense in their mother tongues. Or maybe Ghosh just didn't try hard enough.

Why does this even bother me, I wonder, that this almost reads like a third-party translation of something that was originally laid out in Bengali (like Gopa Mazumder's translations of Satyajit Ray) - a language native to both the "tide country" in which this novel is set, and to Ghosh himself?

Perhaps it's because, at the end of it, I'm unable to decide if I liked it merely because I'm both familiar with and interested in that part of the world already, or because it actually succeeds on its own terms as a novel. I can't tell if the book transcends its context, or whether its a product of it and limited by it. Or, put simply, I'm not sure if it works nearly as well if you're not a Bengali yourself.

Ghosh is a mine of information of all sorts, scientific, political, historical, geographical and geological, and the story reads like a transparent excuse for him to carry on about all manner of things he knows about and cares for - something I'm glad for, simply because he clearly knows about so much. The plot itself is disposable. It's as a document of that part of the world that the book is most valuable.

What I got out of it was a three day look at the Tide Country through the informed eyes of the author. And this is a place which is as otherworldly as they come for all its being practically next door, a land that's not really land, with its rivers that aren't really rivers, with its history and its terrors, and the many, many skeletons in its many, many closets, and its so many people who still try so very hard, a place that's in danger of being forgotten, a place that, if it weren't for people like Amitav Ghosh, would, in our hearts, cease to exist.

I am indebted to Mr.Ghosh for opening it up to us.(less)

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Mar 27, 2010 Animesh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Amitav Ghosh, the author of The Circle of Reason and The Shadow Lines, weaves a complex fabric with some of the fundamentals of the deepest corners of our mind: the animistic instinct, the urge to discover, and the magnetism of finding one's roots. All this woven against a primitive landscape of water and silt, time set against tidal surges and mangrove forest, a flat land low against a stormy sky in the Bengal delta, a place that Ghosh brings alive with the apparent deftness of long familiarity...more

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Mar 15, 2010 Allen Elggren rated it 5 of 5 stars

From Page 216-217

From a displaced character in the book, Kusum...

"Saar," she said, wiping her face, "the worst part was not the hunger or the thirst. It was to sit here, helpless, and listen to the policemen making their announcements, hearing them say that our lives, our existence, were worth less than dirt or dust. 'This island has to be saved for its trees, it has to be saved for its animals, it is a part of a reserve forest, it belongs to a project to save tigers, which is paid for by people...more

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Jan 22, 2011 Adnan rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a beautifully crafted novel, weaving together characters far apart in space and time in a story spanning little over a week and based in the ‘tide country’, the name by which Ghosh refers to the Sundarbans, the settled islands off the coast of Bangladesh. The central characters, Piya, an American scientist of Indian origin, Kanai, the successful owner of a translating service in Calcutta and Fokir, an illiterate fisherman who lives in the tide country, in the tradition of great novels, f...more This is a beautifully crafted novel, weaving together characters far apart in space and time in a story spanning little over a week and based in the ‘tide country’, the name by which Ghosh refers to the Sundarbans, the settled islands off the coast of Bangladesh. The central characters, Piya, an American scientist of Indian origin, Kanai, the successful owner of a translating service in Calcutta and Fokir, an illiterate fisherman who lives in the tide country, in the tradition of great novels, find their paths crossing serendipitously time and again. Piya comes to the tide country to observe the habits of one of its inhabitants, the ‘Irrawaddy dolphin’ as part of her research work. Kanai, meanwhile, finds himself summoned by his aunt, Nilima, who runs a welfare organization in the tide country, to read a manuscript her late husband, Nirmal had left behind for Kanai. It is from the perspective of these two characters, Piya and Kanai, that the story is told but it is the taciturn and indecipherable Fokir who is at the heart of it. Fokir, a married fisherman, plies the waters with his son, whom Fokir encourages to play truant and catch crabs along with himself. He is imbibed in the folklore of the tide country and well-versed in the syncretised tradition of Bon-Bibi.

Piya first crosses Fokir’s path when she is in trouble with some Forest Department toughs aboard a motor boat in the tide country. Accidentally thrown overboard into the turgid waters, she finds herself rescued by Fokir. From then on begins a strange and unlikely romance, unspoken and perhaps even unacknowledged, between the two who cannot even converse with one another yet due to their professions have a bond which makes their causes common. Once Fokir takes her to the island of Lusibari, Piya decides to enlist his invaluable knowledge of the tide country waters and marine life in her observation project. She finds refuge with Nilima, of whom she has heard from Kanai, the one time that they briefly met on the train from Calcutta to Canning.

Kanai, meanwhile, after having met and extended an invitation to Piya, to whom he is attracted, to stay at his aunt’s while she is in the tide country, reaches his aunt’s home on the island of Lusibari. He begins to read the manuscript left by his uncle, Nirmal, an idealistic leftist professor. Kanai is led into a world of the past, shortly before Nirmal’s death, when the latter began to take interest in the island of Morichjapi and the young woman, Kusum, who was once Kanai’s childhood playmate. Nirmal’s interest in both had to do with his left-leanings as Morichjapi is illegally settled by a group of poor and landless people, including Kusum. Nirmal, after his retirement, began to take a great interest in these people’s affairs, hoping, at the end of his life, to kindle the fire of revolution once.

Kanai and Piya meet at Nilima’s house and Kanai tries to woo her, to little avail. He also hears of her encounter with Fokir from Fokir’s wife, Moyna. Moyna is an ambitious woman driven to educate herself and her son to get ahead in a modernizing world, in contrast to her husband, Fokir, who is content to just fish, as his ancestors have done. Moyna, upon hearing that Piya wants to hire Fokir for her project is immediately and simultaneously jealous and joyous. This jealously seems to infect Kanai too and he suggests that he shall go with Piya and Fokir on the expedition to act as the translator between the two.

The fateful expedition that ensues brings together the various strands of the story in a manner both satisfying and heart-rending. The book is replete with evocative descriptions of tide country scenery and traditions, colonial history and the Irrawaddy dolphins; while simultaneously the writer has the gift to leave unwritten what is better left to the reader’s imagination. The book raises provocative questions about modern and traditional societies, revolution and social work and language and its limits. All in all the book was an extremely fulfilling read and the author of this review highly recommends it.(less)

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Dec 27, 2010 Cat rated it 3 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed Ghosh's descriptions of these tidal islands, this improbable (yet real) habitat of river dolphins and man-eating tigers. He interwove regional folktales and political observations in the romantic triangle(s) that the novel focuses on. I would love to learn more about this area of India; Ghosh really made it captivating and clearly did a great deal of research (ecological, political, and cultural). The structure was a little bit choppy and felt very cinematic--maybe too cinematic...more

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May 30, 2009 Catherine Adde rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

This story has such an astonishing, heart-tugging ending, that I wish I had the time to read it again! What intrigued me about it is the setting: the Sundarbans, a group of thousands of islands in the bay of Bengal, India, bordering Bangladesh. Mr. Ghosh, a prize winning author and Oxford scholar, tells the tale while educating us in the ways of the tidal country: its man-eating tigers, exotic Mangrove trees, the extreme weather as in tsunamis and tidal waves (henc...more

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Nov 23, 2009 Shyam Banerji rated it 3 of 5 stars

Fabulously researched. Makes great reading, especially if you have been to Sundarbans. Amitav Ghosh makes it come alive to the last detail. Amazing realism. A book that can be a bit tiring to someone who cannot visualise the Sundarbans. In any case, the Sundarbans has to be seen to be believed. The book has incomparable documentary value and puts Amitav Gosh high up on the list of up thorough researcher-novelists of the world. It takes time to pick up pace, but when it does, it is absolutely sto...more

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Feb 02, 2013 Catherine Siemann rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I first read of the Sundarbans region in an intensely magical realist depiction in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, so I was curious to read a real-world depiction of the same region. Piya, the idealistic American-born marine biologist, is well-balanced by Kanai, the more cynical translator, whose childhood connections to the area give him a very different perspective. The third major character, Fokir, remains an enigma due to his inability to communicate directly with Piya, except through...more

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Feb 29, 2012 Sreelekha Menon rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Set amidst the lush foliage of mangrove forests, The Hungry Tide tells us about the history and lives of people who inhabit the numerous islands of Sunderbans in the Bay of Bengal, the river dolphins, the man eater tigers of the tide country, the sea and the legends that float in these waters and forests. It reminds us of the fragility of human life and the helplessness that comes with it.

Story revolves around American born Bengali descent, Piyali Roy a.ka. Piya, a cetologist who comes to India...more Set amidst the lush foliage of mangrove forests, The Hungry Tide tells us about the history and lives of people who inhabit the numerous islands of Sunderbans in the Bay of Bengal, the river dolphins, the man eater tigers of the tide country, the sea and the legends that float in these waters and forests. It reminds us of the fragility of human life and the helplessness that comes with it.

Story revolves around American born Bengali descent, Piyali Roy a.ka. Piya, a cetologist who comes to India to study the river dolphins; Foker a reticent illiterate boatman with impeccable knowledge of the tide country; Kanai the middle aged translator who thinks of himself as an urban Casanova;Nilima or Maashima Kanai’s aunt, a matriarch with a keen eye for business who single handedly set up a hospital in the fictious island of Lusibari and runs it successfully; and Nirmal ,Kanai’s late uncle with flawless Communist idealogies.

Ghosh spins a tale whose fabric is dyed with realities of the lives of the islanders, yellowed by the passage of time and embroidered by the tales of Bon Bibi and Shah Jongli.He relates to us the massacre of Morichjhanpi, which otherwise is a much suppressed black episode of Indian history, through the diary of Nirmal.The lives of the then dwellers of Morichjhanpi,the event that lead to the massacre and the struggle of the dwellers as they fight for their right-the right to stay alive are vividly

Ghosh boldly questions the atrocities dealt out on the poor in the name of protecting nature. One of the character voices out,

“Saar,” she said, wiping her face, “the worst part was not the hunger or the thirst. It was to sit here, helpless, and listen to the policemen making their announcements, hearing them say that our lives, our existence, were worth less than dirt or dust. ‘This island has to be saved for its trees, it has to be saved for its animals, it is a part of a reserve forest, it belongs to a project to save tigers, which is paid for by people from all around the world.’ Every day, sitting here with hunger gnawing at our bellies, we would listen to these words over and over again. Who are these people, I wondered, who love animals so much that they are willing to kill us for them? Do they know what is being done in their name? Where do they live, these people? Do they have children, do they have mothers, fathers? As I thought of these things, it seemed to me that this whole world had become a place of animals, and our fault, our crime, was that we were just human beings, trying to live as human beings always have, from the water and the soil. No one could think this a crime unless they have forgotten that this is how humans have always lived — by fishing, by clearing land and by planting the soil.”

When the books end, in most cases, the characters end with it. But with “The Hungry Tide”, the characters linger around the corners of your heart posing profound questions on human rights, our role as protectors of nature and the inherent frailty of human nature.
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Jul 22, 2012 Z rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

I was floored by The Glass Palace; The Hungry Tide exhibits the same quality that Ghosh's writing is famous for, the ability to transport the reader into a far-flung universe and make the imaginary vivid and real. The story of Indian American cetologist Piya, Delhi businessman Kanai and fisherman in the Sunderbans Fokir, is moving and interesting. I was initially put off by the long descriptions of dolphin-seeking expeditions out on the Ganga (the combination of sun, water, a threat of tigers an...more

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Mar 12, 2011 Alesa rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is set in the tidelands of India, just to the west of Bangladesh. There are two main characters: an American of Indian parents biologist studying the dolphins (almost extinct) who live there, and an educated Indian whose relatives live in the tidelands. The story not only explains the daily life of the people who live among the mangroves, but also their unfortunate and very sad history. It starts out making you feel like it might be a cheesy book, and there are parts that feel rather i...more

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Mar 06, 2011 Eric rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book belongs on the shelf next to thrilling narratives such as _The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte_, which is to say, somewhere in a dark corner where we can leave it and forget about it.

Ghosh's star character is the Sundarban region of India. He presents the hard realities of civilization on the edge of wilderness in copious, poetic detail. By contrast, his human characters--especially the principals--are presented as somewhat boring and prosaic. Grand claims of romance alongside s...more

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Feb 14, 2013 Graham Crawford rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is my third book by Amitav Ghosh so I guess he's won me as a fan. I don't think he is a master of prose - or character or even narrative. These often seem a bit contrived, but never quite enough to knock the book over. He sort of oscillates between best seller with a social justice vibe and worthy literary novel.

What I do like about him is his research and the sheer number of topics he stuffs his novels with. I Always learn a lot about things I knew very little about, and I learn about them...more

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Oct 08, 2010 Fiona Robinson rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the second book by Amitav Gosh that I have read, the other was The Calcutta Chromosome. I like this one better, I think it is better written and that I might be a bit more mature as a reader as well, more open to a writing style that is a little different from the mainstream North American style. I really enjoyed the portrayal of a young female researcher and her efforts to understand what drives her to follow a difficult lifestyle in order to pursue her research and her questions about...more

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Oct 27, 2011 Saurabh Sharma rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Hungry Tide is a novel that explores and describes the life and struggles of people living in tide country through the eyes of those living a privileged life. It is the story of two strangers who meet on a train journey, and how their lives intertwine through circumstances bringing them closer in adversity. A beautifully written novel that brings to life a piece of India we know very little about and that has seemingly been left behind by the wave of modernity that has surged through many of...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Stan Murai rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: review

This novel introduces the reader to the Sundarbans, a region of islands south of Calcutta and off the coast of the Bay of Bengal. It is a covered by vast mangrove forests, where tigers are still found. Occasional tidal floods threaten the lives of the inhabitants of the region. The main story centers on the interplay between a female American biologist of Indian origin, a New Delhi translator-businessman,and a local fisherman. The biologist is in search of an endangered species of river dolphin...more

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May 28, 2011 Vilo rated it 4 of 5 stars

A page turner (or CD turner) of a novel about an area of India near Kolkata (Calcutta) and Bangladesh where tides frequently break over the "bunds" or dikes and man-eating tigers are protected. Independently a privileged Indian male and a woman who was born in India but raised in Seattle come to the area and slowly discover the beauties and terrors it has to offer. The woman is a scientist studying river dolphins. The man is coming to read a diary that his late uncle left for him, which details...more

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About Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh is one of India's best-known writers. His books include The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, Incendiary Circumstances, The Hungry Tide. His most recent novel, Sea of Poppies, is the first volume of the Ibis Trilogy.

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He studied in Dehra Dun, New Delhi, Alexan...more

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“How do you lose a word? Does it vanish into your memory, like an old toy in a cupboard, and lie hidden in the cobwebs and dust, waiting to be cleaned out or rediscovered?” — 20 people liked it

“(He) was in love with the idea of revolution. Men like that, even when they turn their backs on their party and their comrades, can never let go of the idea: it's the secret god that rules their hearts. It is what makes them come alive; they revel in the danger, the exquisite pain. It is to them what childbirth is to a woman, or war to a mercenary.” — 8 people liked it

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