"The Hungry Tide is a contemporary story of adventure and unlikely love, identity and history, set in one of the most fascinating regions on earth....
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Apr 08, 2008
Foodie
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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
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Jan 04, 2011
Osho
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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 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 s More...
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 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 s More...
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Dec 26, 2007
Jessica
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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
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Jan 03, 2009
Stephen
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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 f
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Aug 01, 2011
Mamta
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It was an interesting but not a phenomenal and was 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 pe
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May 07, 2010
The Super Moop
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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 surpr More...
The bits that grate, then:
Having arrived at this directly from the self-assured Sea of Poppies, I found, to my surpr More...
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Mar 27, 2010
Animesh
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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 familiari
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Mar 15, 2010
Allen
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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 proj More...
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 proj More...
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Jan 22, 2011
Adnan
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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
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Dec 27, 2010
Cat
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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 cinema
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May 30, 2009
Catherine
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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 tida More...
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 tida More...
Nov 23, 2009
Shyam
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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
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Mar 12, 2011
Alesa
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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 rath
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Mar 06, 2011
Eric
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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 romanc More...
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 romanc More...
Oct 08, 2010
Fiona
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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 abou
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Oct 27, 2011
Saurabh
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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
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Jul 27, 2011
Stan
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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
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May 28, 2011
Vilo
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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, w
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May 13, 2009
Jane
rated it:
... this guy is such a terrible writer, I don't know why I bother. Full review once I finish this abominable page-turner...
OK, done: I really can't bear Gosh's style, the dialogue is completely implausible, with nearly every character speaking as though they're declaiming to the wind. He has an unnecessarily high adjective count, and he just generally annoys me. On the upside, this book does some nice stuff with structure, pulling different characters' points of view together quite w More...
OK, done: I really can't bear Gosh's style, the dialogue is completely implausible, with nearly every character speaking as though they're declaiming to the wind. He has an unnecessarily high adjective count, and he just generally annoys me. On the upside, this book does some nice stuff with structure, pulling different characters' points of view together quite w More...
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Jan 04, 2011
pushpam
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To be precise i would give 3.5. The book is more of a deep insight into Sunderban both geographically and politically. Author has sketched a detailed picturesque view of this place and while reading you feel like sitting in a small boat and passing through the mangrove forest.
It starts with Kanai who after a long gap is revisiting his aunt back in this place on her request. His uncle had left over a notebook for Kanai to read. On his way he meets this NRI girl Piya in train and during turn More...
It starts with Kanai who after a long gap is revisiting his aunt back in this place on her request. His uncle had left over a notebook for Kanai to read. On his way he meets this NRI girl Piya in train and during turn More...
Aug 05, 2010
Mary
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After being entranced by Ghosh's most recent book, Sea of Poppies, I was eager to try another of his novels. The Hungry Tide's scope and focus is more limited -- rather than limning a cast of hundreds as in his recent book, Ghosh considers the clash of an Americanized Indian marine biologist, Piya, who is hunting in her ancestral land for sightings of a rare river dolphin and becomes involved with a sophisticated translator/linguist, Navai, who has spent his life in his native land while succu
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Jan 06, 2011
Jill
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I don't know that I would have found this book without my book club reading it, but it was really interesting. An American woman in Indian to study river dolphins meets a man on a train going to retrieve some papers his uncle has left for him. Their lives become entwined, as their stories unfold around a small, island village. I listened to this one on cd, and while it was 14 or 15 cds, I am glad that I did. The reader is either from India or had excellent coaching in pronunciation and accen
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Jan 14, 2009
Ovijit
rated it:
A must read if you are going (or thinking about going) to the Sunderbans or West Bengal, or a should read if you are Bangla. Otherwise, I'm not sure if I would recommend this. Book is slow for the first half, and then it picks up quite a bit and hard to put down towards the end. One thing that bugged me a lot about this book, and often in other books written by immigrant authors (i.e. Khaled Hussaini) is the way they write conversations between people. Its so formal! People talk to each other
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Jul 30, 2010
There are some songs that I love in spite of--or maybe even because of--some of the perceived weaknesses in the lyrics because the music hits all the right notes, and words serve as signposts to the the feelings they carry. That's the sort of experience I had reading this lovely book. Allegory, I thought, when I first started reading it, but by the time I finished, I fell in love with the characters. Henry David Thoreau wrote, "You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to
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Jun 19, 2010
Janne
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I have read many books by Amitav Gosh and generally find them quite good and a learning experience, but this one left me cold. I thought the characters were caricatures, specially Fokir, portrayed as the "noble savage"...give me a break! In spite of that, he writes well. One of the points of this book is the conflict between the environment and the basic needs of people living in fragile areas. The other point is the contrast between doing good locally versus the grandiose ideas t
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Feb 01, 2012
Shweta
rated it:
A lot of Bengali words to spice up, enchanting Sundarbans, local folks, superstitions, unusual maze of relationships, subtle amour and British history.
One thing I noticed was that chapters were sandwiched between flashbacks and present...flashbacks and present...
Setting is very unusual. A cytologist visiting Sundarbans to research for a rare river dolphins. Fokir, is one character to watch for. Unusually strange and quiet.
The story is delightful enough to keep More...
One thing I noticed was that chapters were sandwiched between flashbacks and present...flashbacks and present...
Setting is very unusual. A cytologist visiting Sundarbans to research for a rare river dolphins. Fokir, is one character to watch for. Unusually strange and quiet.
The story is delightful enough to keep More...
Jan 21, 2012
Good story - interesting, I was unable to put the book down after I started. I never knew there are islands in Sundarbans that have people living! I think the author does want to write about Murjihapi massacre. Thats the main event that the author wants to bring to light, but then he is not really brave enough to do that, so he is trying to build stories around it so that he can get to touch it and not get into controversies !
There must be more published literature about Murjihapi mas More...
There must be more published literature about Murjihapi mas More...
Jun 28, 2011
Debbie
rated it:
I read this on recommendation from a friend who read it for her book club. I am still haunted by several sections of this book. I also loved the setting, near Calcutta and Bangladesh. That is a part of the world I may never visit, but I feel like I was THERE from reading this book. My only complaint was that it was long. For that reason, I wouldn't select it for my club as the members are busy women with limited time to read. However, if you want to learn about this part of the world and y
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Oct 05, 2010
Maya
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My mom never reads fiction, so when she actually recommended a novel to me, I had to read it. My family is from Bangladesh, so I got a lot out of the culture woven into the story. Characters are usually what truly draw me into a book, and I was ambivalent about most of the ones in this book. But I loved the cadence and the poetry of Ghosh's writing (and the very important part that poetry in general plays in the story). All in all, it was a different book from what I usually read, but a very enj
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Jul 06, 2010
Amber
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I read this right before I left for Bangladesh--it's set in the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world, which is partly in Bangladesh and partly in India. It was great to get a feel for the culture, a little bit of the language and the landscape. I hope to visit that area soon! The book is set in modern times and follows a marine biologist who studies river dolphins. She travels with a local fisherman who doesn't speak any english. The story also follows a couple other charact
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