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River of Smoke (Ibis Trilogy #2)

3.83 of 5 stars 3.83 · rating details · 1,904 ratings · 341 reviews

In September 1838, a storm blows up on the Indian Ocean and the Ibis, a ship carrying a consignment of convicts and indentured laborers from Calcutta to Mauritius, is caught up in the whirlwind. River of Smoke follows its storm-tossed characters to the crowded harbors of China. There, despite efforts of the emperor to stop them, ships from Europe and India exchange their c...more

Hardcover, 522 pages

Published June 1st 2011 by John Murray Publishers (first published January 1st 2010)

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Feb 19, 2012 Megha rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: india, reviews

Old News: BAH! I am going to have to come back and fix (may be rewrite) this review later.

Current News: Review updated.
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Where were we? On the Ibis, after the storm, right? Amitav Ghosh picks up the threads from there, tells us about the different directions in which the characters were scattered and then we continue to follow Neel who brings us to Canton to witness the drama and politics surrounding the opium trade (psst! smuggling), and an account of the events which wi...more

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Dec 27, 2010 Janet Frasier marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Where is this book?? It was originally to be published in 10/2010, but my local bookseller hasn't seen it?? My heart is still stranded in that longboat paddling away from the Ibis!!

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Nov 11, 2011 Jen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

i LOVED this just as much as the 1st book in this unfinished trilogy, Sea of Poppies. Such a captivating story --- the narrative and characters are engaging enough, and then there's the HISTORY - i knew really nothing about the Opium Wars, or this part of the world (mostly takes place in Canton, China), and definitely nothing about the amazing cultural landscape and linguistic creations that grew there. So interesting for a fictionalized historical take on political issues like imperialism and f...more

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May 12, 2013 Leon marked it as to-read · review of another edition

In September 1838 a storm blows up on the Indian Ocean and the Ibis, a ship carrying a consignment of convicts and indentured laborers from Calcutta to Mauritius, is caught up in the whirlwind. When the seas settle, five men have disappeared - two lascars, two convicts and one of the passengers. Did the same storm upend the fortunes of those aboard the Anahita, an opium carrier heading towards Canton? And what fate befell those aboard the Redruth, a sturdy two-masted brig heading East out of Cor

...more

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Mar 04, 2013 Aeron rated it 4 of 5 stars

More loveliness from Ghosh. Like its predecessor, Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke is not a technically brilliant novel. It seems sprawling and almost haphazard, the way it careens through time and between characters. But that's okay with me because the characters are fabulous and the storytelling strong enough to grab me and pull me into this pipe dream of a narrative.

This installment takes us away from India, where in the first book we witnessed the opium industry throwing some our characters'...more

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Feb 21, 2013 Sarbpreet Singh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Amitav Ghosh is not yet a great writer, but is certainly a very good one! The River of Smoke, the second installment in the Ibis trilogy is a less compelling book than the Sea Of Poppies. It is nevertheless a hugely entertaining read. The most interesting aspect of the book by far is the author's recreation of Fanqui Town in Canton on the eve of the Opium wars and the quasi historical characters that populate it. I had never really read a lot about the Opium Wars; its is most interesting to get...more

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Jan 28, 2013 Flatfoot Vertigo rated it 5 of 5 stars

What utter fascination and delight to read Amitav Ghosh. His characters are perfectly drawn, from the inside out, and this book in particular, River of Smoke, paints, with a fine and delicate brush, a colorful and ornate portrait of Canton's Fanqui town and the opium trade involving Britain, India, and isolationist China in the middle 1800s.

Historical fiction, this reads more like a fictional novel, full of characters with longing and ambition in a wide range, from self-righteous, racist, imperi...more What utter fascination and delight to read Amitav Ghosh. His characters are perfectly drawn, from the inside out, and this book in particular, River of Smoke, paints, with a fine and delicate brush, a colorful and ornate portrait of Canton's Fanqui town and the opium trade involving Britain, India, and isolationist China in the middle 1800s.

Historical fiction, this reads more like a fictional novel, full of characters with longing and ambition in a wide range, from self-righteous, racist, imperialist chauvanist English opium traders to a young woman who must pose as a boy on a ship and who later becomes the assistant to a famous botanist; to a flaming gay son of a famous painter, flambouyant and lively, yet lonely for a special Friend.

The book moves among several sets of characters whose dealings and fates are sometimes closely and sometimes distantly intertwined and all of which would make a fascinating read on their own.

I have loved Ghosh since reading the Glass Palace because he writes with compassion for all his characters without sacrificing clarity as to their motives and choices, positive and negative.

I also loved all the references to Indian cultural practice and activities that an Indian reader would take for granted. Though I didn't take time to look them up, I enjoyed the feeling of being an outsider looking into a cultural frame of reference. Completely absorbed in the narrative, I didn't want to put down the book to find definitions for references such as "tamasha," a spectacle, an entertainment, often with singing and dancing:

"It was not till we were well past the usual landmarks - the Shamian sandbank, the Dutch Fort, the execution grounds - that it came to our attention that a huge crowd had gathered along the shore, in order to goggle at some kind of tamasha that was being staged upon a barge.

On approaching a little closer it became evident that the spectacle consisted of a man who had been put on public display, with a huge wooden pillory around his neck. Jacqua spoke to some passing boatmen and learnt that this man stood accused of being a confederate of the wretched Mr. Innes: this was his punishment for conniving to smuggle opium into the city. The boatman said he might even be beheaded if Mr. Innes did not leave the city!"

As a former teacher and a librarian, I love the experience of reading engrossing work that not only enlightens me as to human history but makes me curious enough to read nonfiction to learn more about a period of history like isolationist China and the opium wars. My education as to world history is poor, so I am grateful to writers like Ghosh who can make history fascinating and inspire further inquiry.

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Jan 25, 2013 Patricia rated it 5 of 5 stars

I found the recommendation for River of Smoke on NPR, and ordered it immediately. I could have read it's predecessor, Sea of Poppies, which would have helped me keep the characters straight, but although the book is dense with detail, I just slowed down and enjoyed the ride.

River of Smoke paints a picture of a time when the major powers of the world are making big bucks shipping opium into China, the risks are not so bad and the pay-off is high. River of Smoke is rich in visual detail, as you ho...more

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Dec 24, 2012 Mal Warwick rated it 4 of 5 stars

A Brilliant Indian Novel about the 19th Century Opium Trade with China

Balzac (and lots of people after him) thought that “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” Nowhere is that aphorism more baldly illustrated than in the 19th-Century opium trade that enriched England, Scotland, and the United States and created a score of hereditary fortunes that have left their mark on the world for nearly two centuries since. After all, when Europeans introduced China to the practice of mixing opium wi...more A Brilliant Indian Novel about the 19th Century Opium Trade with China

Balzac (and lots of people after him) thought that “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” Nowhere is that aphorism more baldly illustrated than in the 19th-Century opium trade that enriched England, Scotland, and the United States and created a score of hereditary fortunes that have left their mark on the world for nearly two centuries since. After all, when Europeans introduced China to the practice of mixing opium with tobacco in the mid-18th Century, the one-sided trade in Chinese porcelain, tea, silk, and other goods was rapidly draining Europe of silver and reinforcing China’s position as the world’s richest country. The opium trade reversed that trend. Early in the 19th Century, with the Industrial Revolution gathering force in Europe, China’s nearly two-century-long decline was underway. Meanwhile, massive profits from opium enriched the endowments of Harvard and Yale, helped build Princeton and Columbia Universities; launched the fortunes of the Astors, the Delanos (FDR’s grandparents); and bankrolled the Bell Telephone Company, antecedent of AT&T.

River of Smoke is the second book in Amitav Ghosh’s planned Ibis trilogy set among the momentous events of the massive 19th-Century opium trade between India and China. The first book in the trilogy, Sea of Poppies, set the scene with an in-depth look at the harvesting and manufacture of opium in India. River of Smoke details the life at sea and in the foreign enclave in Canton of the immensely rich men who dominated the trade, principally Britons.

Ghosh’s sprawling novel spans the years 1838 and 1839, detailing the events in South China that led to the First Opium War. The central plot-line follows the journey of a poor Indian Parsi (Zoroastrian) named Bahram who had risen to lead the trade division of a celebrated Mumbai shipbuilding company owned by his wealthy in-laws. Though not yet rich himself, Bahram has become the dean of the Indian opium traders, realizing profits for the family as great as those of many of the British and Americans but, in the racist fashion of the times, he is looked down upon as “inferior.” However, he comes to play a principal role in the traders’ increasingly tense and threatening dealings with the newly energized Chinese government, which has resolved to end the opium trade. (Bahram is the author’s invention, but the English and American traders depicted in the novel come straight from the pages of history.)

Any lover of language will find the writing of Amitav Ghosh irresistible. I certainly did. Both the dialogue and the narrative text in Sea of Poppies were enchanting. Ghosh had immersed himself in contemporaneous dictionaries and wordlists of 1830s India and Britain to reproduce the language and the vocabulary of not one but several English dialects. In fact, a great many of the novel’s characters are historical figures who left behind memoirs, letters, parliamentary testimony, and other records, and as Ghosh notes in his acknowledgments, “Much that is said in this book is taken from [the characters'] own words.” Even more colorful is the hybrid language that emerged from the marriage of English and Hindi and surfaces in dialogue throughout the book. But in River of Smoke, it’s the pidgin of 19th-Century Canton that stands out, and wonderful it is to behold!(less)

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Dec 21, 2012 Randy rated it 2 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed book one of this pending trilogy. Sea of Poppies was action packed, tense, enjoyable reading with characters I liked and rooted for. Imagine my surprise when River of Smoke, which I bought immediately after finishing Sea of Poppies, turned out to be a crashing bore. What happened to our main characters? At the end of Sea of Poppies they escaped in a storm? I was anxious to follow their progress through book two. Mr. Ghosh had other ideas but it seemed to me that he pretty much p...more

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Oct 10, 2012 Carol rated it 5 of 5 stars

Second part of the trilogy.

Re-reading this book again now to better appreciate all the scenes and the various characters - since I read bit by bit, I tend to forget who is who as there are a lot characters.

The most interesting part of this book was when the characters are based in Canton, just before the first Opium War. The Parsi Seth, the ex-Raja turned escaped "convict" and my favorite character, Robin Chinnery (a fictional son of a famous British based in China painter, George Chinnery) wi...more

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Aug 06, 2012 Omar Omar rated it 5 of 5 stars

Having already read 'Sea of Poppies', I was looking forward to what Ghosh had to offer next. The follow-up did not disappoint. This time, Ghosh takes us to the foreign enclave in Canton, the only place under Chinese jurisdiction where foreign merchants can do business in China. By the 1830s, opium, officially banned in China, has made many a Western merchant rich, but at the expense of the consumers who use it. Bahram Moddie, a self-made Parsi merchant, has just arrived in Canton with possibly t...more

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Jun 21, 2012 Ratan Bhattacharjee added it

After Song of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh's second novel The River of Smoke was published, and was one of the great novels of the twenty first century Indian English literature. He is now writing the third part of his Ibis trilogy.AMITAV GHOSH took nearly three and a half years to write the second book of his Ibis trilogy. He spent several weeks in Guangzhou and learnt some Cantonese to depict the background of the novel which is set in Fanquit town. Most of the action occurs in Guangzhou. Like the Se...more

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May 20, 2012 Maheep rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This second installment of the well – researched Ibis trilogy has the story further floating
(independently) from Sea of Poppies into the historical epic by Amitav Ghosh that drains itself in
the lives of people, experiencing the year, 1838. Here, the imagery (which infact is very rich) has
taken the characters sailing towards a converging world of Canton, a sea-port in China – which
endows the potency to make dreams come true.

The book has taken a paradigm behind the pages of the past – and has the...more

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Apr 04, 2012 Monica rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: india

Wonderful, richly satisfying beautifully written, an amazing look at the city of Canton just before the outbreak of the First Opium War in 1839. This sequel to Sea of Poppies follows the lives of a couple of the characters from that book - Neel, the Rajah exiled for bankruptcy, and Paulette, the orphaned daughter of a French botanist who escaped from Calcutta disguised as a boy. The main focus of the book is Bahram, or Barrie, a Parsee opium trader who was not in Sea of Poppies.

From The Guardian...more

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Mar 31, 2012 Nichola rated it 4 of 5 stars

Loved this book! I picked it up at the library because the name of the author looked familiar, but it turned out that this was the first of his books that I had read. Set in China in the 1800's, at the beginning of the opium wars. I think that I should have started with "Sea of Poppies", I'll go back and read that now.
I vaguely knew that the West had introduced opium to China, and that many Chinese had become addicted and died from their addiction, but I had no idea of how valuable the opium tra...more

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Feb 22, 2012 Betty rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-novels

Oh, my... This book sets such a high standard that it makes me think I should go back and "demote" a lot of my five-star books to four! River of Smoke is the second novel of a planned trilogy by Amitov Ghosh. I loved the first one, Sea of Poppies, but delayed reading River of Smoke after it came out, just to prolong the anticipation. I was not disappointed. The novels take place against the backdrop of the opium trade, overseen by the British between India and China. The political, economical, a...more

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Dec 27, 2011 Mark Staniforth rated it 3 of 5 stars

In a literary world whose bestseller lists are clogged up with chick-lit and the memoirs of C-list celebs, it may seem churlish to make the chief criticism of Amitav Ghosh's 519-page 'River Of Smoke' that of over-ambition.
Ghosh's novel - the second in a trilogy that began with the Booker-shortlisted 'Sea Of Poppies' in 2008 - is an epic by any standards: extraordinarily researched; superb in its evocation of a distant time and place.
But strictly in the context of the literary firmament into whi...more In a literary world whose bestseller lists are clogged up with chick-lit and the memoirs of C-list celebs, it may seem churlish to make the chief criticism of Amitav Ghosh's 519-page 'River Of Smoke' that of over-ambition.
Ghosh's novel - the second in a trilogy that began with the Booker-shortlisted 'Sea Of Poppies' in 2008 - is an epic by any standards: extraordinarily researched; superb in its evocation of a distant time and place.
But strictly in the context of the literary firmament into which the critical reaction to 'Sea Of Poppies' has placed him, you can't help feeling that Ghosh's account of events leading up to the first Opium War in China in 1840 - whilst always as elegaic as they are exhaustive - might have benefited from a more brutal edit.
'River Of Smoke' is set predominantly in the Chinese port of Canton, where a ragged cast of characters eventually converge as a consequence of a terrible storm which unshackles prisoners and swamps precious cargo-holds of the so-called 'black dirt' - the opium that British traders have been harvesting on the sub-continent and smuggling into China over generations (generally with the tacit approval of the Chinese authorities).
As the drug takes root in Chinese society, however, a crackdown looms, threatening the livelihoods of the merchants who have grown grotesquely rich on its profits, and who see no reason why China's reinforcement of opium's illegality ought to be allowed to restrict their lucrative trade.
At the centre of the story is Bahram, a Parsi trader from Bombay, who seeks to land the enormous haul that will finally earn him the respect of his rich wife's family, and enable him to finally buy their export business outright.
Bahram is an ingenious creation: a deeply-flawed character, an opium trader with 'a large and generous heart'; a man at once covetous of and repulsed by the exclusive Club run by the gluttinous British brigade, who undoubtedly seek his membership purely as a means to suit their own ends; an undercurrent of racism is implied throughout.
Bahram's poor background lends a delicious subtlety to what is otherwise an insight into early Colonialism at its worst. '..it is not my hand that passes sentence upon those who choose the indulgence of opium..' opines one British captain in response to entreaties to withhold his cargo for the good of the Chinese people: '.. It is the work of another, invisible omnipotent: it is the hand of freedom, of the market, of the spirit of liberty itself, which is none other than the breath of God.'
It itself, Ghosh's chronicle of the rising tensions between the Chinese authorities and the British merchants, which would end in war, the Treaty of Nanking and, ultimately, the secession of Hong Kong to British rule, is a shocking, riveting and undoubtedly brilliant piece of work, told in a dazzling array of colloquial tongues and imbued with no little amount of irony in respect of the economic emergence of China and India today.
Settle for that central theme, you feel, and Ghosh would have an instant classic on his hands. Where he falls a little short, however, is in the sheer scope of his novel. His cast of characters is extraordinary, yet so many are virtual transients, their back-stories carefully laid bare before they disappear back into Canton's crowded alleys, that they become almost impossible to remember: they are often drawn into the ever more tangled web by coincidences that seem a little far-fetched - a chance meeting, for example, in the Wordy Market, a bustling place of which the narrator asks: 'where else could a man go, clothed in nothing but a loincloth, and walk away in a whalebone corset and silk slippers?'
The momentum of the central story is also weighed down somewhat by a secondary plot which concerns another storm survivor, Paulette, who is rescued from a run-down garden by an esteemed English botanist, and charged with discovering the elusive and possibly mythical golden camellia: a flower, it is said, with more financial potential than the tea-plant.
Barred from docking in Canton as a foreign woman, Paulette sets an artist friend, Robin Chinnery, the task of discovering the plant: his travails are recorded in a series of letters which pock-mark the second part of the novel. Despite the engaging conceit, however, it is here the plot peters out: Chinnery's letters recreate a rich Cantonese street life, but otherwise serve little purpose. Paulette is rendered pretty much an after-thought, and the eventual merging of the two strands is somewhat tenuous.
If all this seems rather negative, it is not especially intended to be. Have no doubt: River Of Smoke is an epic, intense, richly rewarding novel, and one which its few frustrations do little to spoil. It is by any standards an excellent book. The abiding frustration is that it might have been a great one. (less)

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Dec 26, 2011 Leila rated it 5 of 5 stars

Historical fiction, adventure tale, and moral parable -all rolled into one and thoroughly entertaining throughout -- this book mostly takes place in the foreign trading enclave of Canton, just before the launch of the Opium wars. The characters are fascinating, the scenes so intensely vivid --even the food comes to life --the settings are as visual as an 18th century street-scene painting with the author yanking the reader into dark alleys and dimly lit storefronts to see where they lead. Much o...more

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Dec 07, 2011 D K rated it 3 of 5 stars

A pretty heroic feat of research that doesn't bog down until 2/3 of the way through. The novel doesn't have a plot so much as a pervasive feeling of inevitability -- all characters will encounter one another, and the impending opium wars will affect them all.

The pacing was brisker than 'Sea of Poppies' at the outset, though the Ghoshian glut of detail is still there. At page 360, all the edicts and letters passing between the Committees and Government officials became tiresome and monotonous. Th...more

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Oct 28, 2011 Janne rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

I loved Sea of Poppies and was anxiously awaiting this sequel; I had to know what would happen to a number of it's characters. I was disappointed. The focus in River of Smoke is on the shady characters that were responsible for the opium trading in China. The story unfolds mainly in Canton, and eve though it is a pleasure to read the description of the town and hear Ghosh's beautiful rendering of the language spoken by the mixture of peoples that populate the city, it is not what I expected. Gho...more

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Oct 16, 2011 Jennyreadsexcessively rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ghosh's trilogy is about the Opium Wars between Britain and China in the first half of the 19th century. The first novel (a favorite of mine) set the story in India where the poppies are grown and shipped to China. Here in River of Smoke, the story moves to Canton, and more specifically Fanqui-town--the sectioned-off portion of the coastal city where foreign traders have established a trading post. The main character is Bahram, an Indian importer of opium, who is invited to sit on the council of...more

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Sep 06, 2011 Bob rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the benefits of a summer trip to London is to discover that a much anticipated new book is available there before its United States publication date. So much to my surprise I was able to purchase Amitar Ghosh’s new book, the second of his Ibis trilogy, RIVER OF SMOKE. The first book being the outstanding SEA OF POPPIES (A+) which I read in 2009. Ghosh continues to amaze with his newest volume as both an excellent writer and story teller. I can not wait for the concluding volume in a few y...more One of the benefits of a summer trip to London is to discover that a much anticipated new book is available there before its United States publication date. So much to my surprise I was able to purchase Amitar Ghosh’s new book, the second of his Ibis trilogy, RIVER OF SMOKE. The first book being the outstanding SEA OF POPPIES (A+) which I read in 2009. Ghosh continues to amaze with his newest volume as both an excellent writer and story teller. I can not wait for the concluding volume in a few years.
The trilogy is told against the backdrop of the Opium wars of the early 1800s. The first book took many characters to tell the story of how the Opium was produced by the East India Company in India. These characters all found their way to becoming passengers on the ship “Ibis” and the book ends with a great storm and its various character future plot lines are cast off without clean endings. So I for one expected that the second book would continue with this same group of characters and there individual stories. Hoping I guess that they all would continue to star in Ghosh’s epic production. This was not to be as Ghosh opens SMOKE with what I found to be an extremely muddled opening chapter or two. But then things get going and we also discover that Ghosh has something larger in mind. The story he intends to tell is that of the Opium trade itself. His characters and there stories provide an entertaining window on a world dominated by Opium and its impact on lives and history. The research in this book is astounding. You can feel, see, and smell every part of Canton, China where the setting has now moved from India. This is not a story told in hindsight… it is told in real time with what one recognizes must be real peoples reactions to real time events . The book reaches an incredibly high benchmark for historical fiction writing.
As book two begins we are introduced to two other ships who are riding out the storm (with the Ibis?). One has as a passenger, Paulette who is brought forward from the first book and wants to re-discover a rare flower China is rumored to have that is said to cure almost anything. The other ship has the book’s new main character Bahram Modi, an Indian, the father of Ah Fatt who is also one of the carry over characters from POPPIES. Bahram invests everything in one big gamble… taking a huge shipment of Opium from India to China. We are introduced to him and his cargo as they sail though a huge storm as he fights against the real possibility of his losing his cargo and investment. When he arrives in Canton. China he finds that the Emperor of China has decide to close Chinese ports to Opium trade. A trade that has all along been illegal in China. (The British profited greatly by trading opium in exchange for Tea and other Chinese goods. This they did in the name of “free trade” and the rule of “markets” with no concern that Opium’s impact on China was. It does not take much for the reader to recognize that Ghosh has found an historical parallel for today’s globalization. He focuses on the clash of culture, empire, ambition, profiteering, art, language and love.
I liked these lines found near the end of the book, “Am I wrong to think that it was you who said that the involvement of a government representative would be a perversion of the laws of free trade? This is no longer a matter of trade…it now concerns our persons, our safety. Oh I see!....The government is to you what God is to agnostics – only to be invoked when your own well-being is at stake!” And another line that demonstrates the larger ambition of the narrative, “And what was it all for…… Was it just for this: so that these fellows could speak English, and wear hats and trousers, and play cricket?”
To paraphrase Ghosh, if he had not written such a splendid novel about Canton no one would believe that such a place had ever existed. This is the second part of an amazingly entertaining read. Don’t miss out.
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Aug 14, 2011 Zina rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the second part of Amitav Ghosh's trilogy on the Opium wars - arguably the worst episode (among many) of Britain's history. It deals with the nineteenth century opium trade that Britain used - opium grown in India and shipped to China to create addiction there that would change the trade deficit Britain had with China. Before this Britain's imports of tea from China were so high, but exports of anything TO China so low, that the country's coffers to silver were draining fast. So Britain...more This is the second part of Amitav Ghosh's trilogy on the Opium wars - arguably the worst episode (among many) of Britain's history. It deals with the nineteenth century opium trade that Britain used - opium grown in India and shipped to China to create addiction there that would change the trade deficit Britain had with China. Before this Britain's imports of tea from China were so high, but exports of anything TO China so low, that the country's coffers to silver were draining fast. So Britain became a narco-state to set things right. And when the Chinese authorities finally put their feet down and tried to ban this, the British government went to war in the name of Free Trade, and won. The main prize was Hong Kong as well as what became known as the New Territories, as well, of course, as the right to trade whatever it wished.

Amitav Ghosh's trilogy has a vast cast of characters from India, China, Britain and the USA. But it is seen through the third person eyes of largely Indian characters, many of them having appeared in the first part of the trilogy Sea of Poppies. In this second volume Ghosh has the problem that faces many writers of historical fiction when the core of the story is the politics of the times: how to present complex information and many facts without giving lectures. He does this by having one character, a gay mixed-race artist, who as a man has the right to live in the foreigners' quarter of Canton, which was the furthest foreigners could get, write letters to a young woman, friend since childhood, who as a foreign woman is not allowed in Canton. There is another occasion when two of our main characters, in a flash back, have had a meeting with Napoleon when he was imprisoned on the Atlantic island of St Helena, and discuss the opium trade with him...and so on. This all works very well, although one can see exactly what Ghosh is doing - a case of the scaffolding rather on view. On the other hand, I cannot think how else he could have done it, so I shouldn't cavil.

I was longing for this book to come out having read the first volume more or less as soon as it became available. And now I can't wait for the third, which he is presumably writing. His narrative style is uncluttered and direct, but at the same time he happily drops into a variety of Indian languages and phrases, and pidgin as well. And if you don't follow every word, no matter: you get the gist and the flavour is the thing.

If you didn't know the history in any detail before (I did but that's because of my student days) you will learn a lot, and be most entertained along the way. If you did know the history you can enjoy the writing for itself alone and for the sympathetic eye he casts on characters whose motives are legion and for the most part as humanly selfish as we are accustomed to seeing today. Highly recommended. (less)

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Dec 16, 2012 Sudeshna rated it 3 of 5 stars

So, where were we? The Ibis landed in the island of Mareech orMauritius right? In this installment of what will be called the Ibis trilogy, the voyage of the charecters continue. After quite a few lives lost, and some bloodshed the Ibis reaches it’s destination. Quite a few charecters are no more mentioned and some are new additions. In all the following charecters take the center stage.
• Bahram Modi - Parsi Merchant from Bombay and father of Ah Fat
• Chi Mei - A Cantonese Boat woman who is the l...more So, where were we? The Ibis landed in the island of Mareech orMauritius right? In this installment of what will be called the Ibis trilogy, the voyage of the charecters continue. After quite a few lives lost, and some bloodshed the Ibis reaches it’s destination. Quite a few charecters are no more mentioned and some are new additions. In all the following charecters take the center stage.
• Bahram Modi - Parsi Merchant from Bombay and father of Ah Fat
• Chi Mei - A Cantonese Boat woman who is the lover of Bahram Modi
• Ah Fat - Son of Bahram Modi and Chi Mei
• Neel - Munshi of Bahram Modi
• Vico - Bahram Modi’s purser
• Zadig Bey - Armenian watch maker and friend of Bahram Modi
• Fitcher Penrose - A Scottish botanist on an expedition to collect rare plants in China
• Paulette Lambert - Daughter of a French botanist who accompanies Mr. Fitcher on his expedition.
• Robert Chinnery - Artist, Paulette’s friend and son of George Chinnery
• Commissioner Lin Zexu - The incorruptible Chinese mandarin who is appointed by the Emperor of China to put an end to opium trading.
Now that we know who’s who lets get back to the story. Neel Rattan and Ah Fatt have escaped the Ibis. Paulette has taken a step towards a fresh beginning to her life and Deeti is mentioned only in the start and briefly towards the end. The pace of the story is brisk in the start ( briskier than Sea Of Poppies, i.e.) and slows down after a while. After that every page is sheer disappointment. As I said, I wanted to hear more about Deeti. I wanted Zachary Reid to be there and see the love between him and Paulette bloom. I wanted more of Jodu too. I do not have problems with the language. I wanted a better story and the elimination of the charecters were unecessary too. The language has to be brilliant when Amitav Ghosh writes, but the storyline is the backbone. The second one in the Ibis trilogy is disappointment.
But hey, the start was brilliant and the author is brilliant too. The end I believe will be great too.He has to be back with a bang. I’m still looking forward to the third book.
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Sep 02, 2012 Karo rated it 5 of 5 stars

Amitav Ghosh has taken his time to write the second part of the Ibis trilogy, but although I had long forgotten what the first part was all about, it was worth the long wait. Picking up the many strings of the narration that led a colourful cast of characters to weather a storm on the Ibis on her way across the Indian Ocean, Ghosh quickly sends them off into different directions again. While some stay behind in their new home on Mauritius, Neel and Ah Fatt make their way to Canton, in search of...more Amitav Ghosh has taken his time to write the second part of the Ibis trilogy, but although I had long forgotten what the first part was all about, it was worth the long wait. Picking up the many strings of the narration that led a colourful cast of characters to weather a storm on the Ibis on her way across the Indian Ocean, Ghosh quickly sends them off into different directions again. While some stay behind in their new home on Mauritius, Neel and Ah Fatt make their way to Canton, in search of Ah Fatt's father, Bahram Modi, a Parsi opium trader. His story is told against the backdrop of the unfolding Opium Wars between China and Britain, although by the end of the novel, war has not yet broken out. Instead, the reader gets a taste of what life was like in Canton, the only Chinese place that allowed foreign traders to live and work in the 1830s. As in Sea of Poppies before, Ghosh is a master of evocation. He manages to include even the tiniest detail in his descriptions of the time and place of the story.
And what a story it is - dealing with botany, opium, Chinese politics, painting and family histories, all across pretty much every culture that played a part in the history of 19th century Asia. What amazed me was that although I was constantly bombarded with facts I never once got bored of them. Ghosh makes the place come to life, every detail adds another layer to the story, and yet you can never get enough of it.
For me, being the nerd I am, those parts that dealt with language stood out. Again, as in Sea of Poppies, the entire text is one big example for the multi-cultured setting of the story. Like the boatmen on the Ibis, the traders and locals in Canton use a certain form of pidgin to communicate and not get lost in the multitude of languages spoken. This is a joy to read, although it can border on hard work, given that Amitav Ghosh takes his pidgin seriously. Sometimes you have to skim and try to get the gist, which is probably as close to the real situation as you can get. In this novel, Neel acts as the character who tries to get on top of the language confusion and plans to tame it by planning a dictionary. On his webpage, Ghosh goes as far as to publish the framework of this dictionary. What a man. (Really. Hmmm.)
River of Smoke is one of the rare books that promise a lot and deliver even more. It's a wonderful, exciting story full of amazing characters and heaps of information. It will be a few more years until we can finish the trilogy, and until then, I would very much like to sit in Amitav Ghosh's study and see that nothing happens to the man while he writes. Or is that too creepy?(less)

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Aug 18, 2011 Sundarraj Kaushik rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Nice book. It continues from where the "Sea of Poppies" leaves us. The book starts at a much later time after the end in "Sea of Poppies". It starts with a description of Deeti and her descendants going to a temple in a remote corner of Mauritius. In this temple Deeti has recorded her travel and experiences from India to Mauritius. Others like Neel and Paulette have also contributed to this. From here it traces the lives of Neel, Ah Fatt, Paulette and Seth Bahram (Ah Fatt's father) from the time...more Nice book. It continues from where the "Sea of Poppies" leaves us. The book starts at a much later time after the end in "Sea of Poppies". It starts with a description of Deeti and her descendants going to a temple in a remote corner of Mauritius. In this temple Deeti has recorded her travel and experiences from India to Mauritius. Others like Neel and Paulette have also contributed to this. From here it traces the lives of Neel, Ah Fatt, Paulette and Seth Bahram (Ah Fatt's father) from the time at the end of the "Sea of Poppies".
It starts off with how Seth Bahram starts of a poor Parsi living in Navsari in Gujarat and how he comes to marry a rich Parsi's daughter. He then persuades his reluctant father in law to allow him to trade in Opium which is grown in India and is sold in China. The book gives details of how the trade has caused a large population of China to become addicted to it and how the emperor of China is trying to stop its inflow. This is resisted, for obvious reasons, by the British, American and the few Indian traders.
The book goes on to describe how Seth Bahram has set off from Bombay with a large, and hopefully his last, shipment of opium which he has purchased after staking everything that he has. He gets caught in the same storm as Ibis and loses some part of his shipment. By the time he reaches Hongkong the Emperor has managed to shutdown the port of Canton in an attempt to eradicate smuggling of opium into the country. So all the opium importers have to anchor at Hongkong.
In Hongkong Seth meets Ah Fatt his son sired through a Chinese lady in his earlier jaunts to China. The lady in question has died and Ah Fatt has tried to escape to India to meet his father where he is caught committing a crime for which he is sentenced to be transported to Mauritius and that is how he comes to meet Neel.
Neel becomes the Munshi to the Seth as the Seth's Munshi has died because of a trunk falling on his head during the storm. Neel and the Seth travel to Canton in another boat.
In the meantime Paulette meets Mr. Penrose a botanist who is on his way to China to trace a flower of exquisite beauty. He has a painting of this flower which was brought by an earlier botanist. Paulette joins Mr. Penrose on this journey to China and they are anchored at Hongkong too.
Also in parallel an artist from Britain who had run away from his wife in Britain to India had sired two sons through his Indian mistress. This mistress and the mother of Jodu who took care of Paulette happen to live in the same area and are friends. This artist has runaway again from his mistress in India to Canton as no foreign ladies are allowed in Canton. He then shifts to Hongkong and is presently living there. Here he is joined by one of his sons who has been friends of Jodu and Paulette. Mr. Penrose comes in touch with this artist to try and locate the artist who might have painted the flower that he is trying to search and thus Paulette gets back in touch with her childhood friend the son of this artist.
This son then moves to Canton and from here he keeps Paulette updated with the events in Canton through a series of letters.
Now the book moves on to describe the living of the foreign merchants in Canton. It details how the opium is smuggled into the country.
The book goes onto say how these merchants are forced to surrender their opium to the representative of the Chinese emperor who goes on to destroy this opium so that it causes no more problem. In the process Seth Bahram loses all his money and for fear of recrimination from the people from who he has borrowed he commits suicide. The book ends at this point.
It is an engrossing book and loses no steam. It carries on from where the "Sea of Poppies" left off. It looks like the third part would be equally engrossing.
Mr. Amitav Ghosh has managed to hold his audience enthralled. (less)

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Dec 08, 2011 Myrina rated it 3 of 5 stars

I did not read Sea of Poppies, but thought the continued history (the China part) would be interesting to read from a historical perspective.

That said, I tried to get through the first pages with no luck and finally skimmed to page 25 where, in order to stand on its own, the book should have begun with backstory filled in. (Later there would be much discussion on whether the Anahita was struck by the same storm....etc.)

Bahram is well drawn, likable and forgivable for his foibles. He is well repr...more

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Nov 12, 2011 Lisa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Lisa by: Shadow Man Asian Literary Prize 2011

Shelves: 21st-century, india

If the rest of the longlisted books are in the same league as Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke, I predict that we will have a tough time choosing a winner for our Shadow Man Asian Literary Award, (see http://wp.me/phTIP-3Bz)and so will the official jury. It’s a great story by a master story-teller, and like the great 19th century novels it is said to resemble, it offers thought-provoking issues to ponder long after the book is finished.

For most of my adult life, de-regulation and free trade has dom...more If the rest of the longlisted books are in the same league as Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke, I predict that we will have a tough time choosing a winner for our Shadow Man Asian Literary Award, (see http://wp.me/phTIP-3Bz)and so will the official jury. It’s a great story by a master story-teller, and like the great 19th century novels it is said to resemble, it offers thought-provoking issues to ponder long after the book is finished.

For most of my adult life, de-regulation and free trade has dominated our globalised economics. What Ghosh exposes in River of Smoke is the concept of ‘market failure’ in the globalised economies that occurred under colonisation, that is, he explores what happens
•when business fails to self-regulate,
•when individuals’ self-interest leads to outcomes that are inefficient from a societal point-of-view, and
•when government intervention becomes necessary in order to benefit society but is restricted in what it can achieve because of the actions of other economies.

In the context of the Global Financial Crisis and the emergence of India and China into the modern economy, I can’t think of a more relevant issue for ordinary people to explore – but economics is dry stuff for most of us. Ghosh’s achievement is to turn this issue into a riveting story with unsettling moral issues at its heart.

River of Smoke is an historical epic, second in the trilogy after Sea of Poppies. (See my review. It’s not at all necessary to read the first book, but since it’s such fun, I recommend that you do). River of Smoke begins the story with Deeti, now the matriarch of a large clan which once a year gathers on the island of Mauritius to celebrate its amazing history. Miraculously, having been parted in a spectacular storm, the motley collection of characters from Sea of Poppies survived and were reunited. How they got to Mauritius in their disparate ways is recorded on a series of decorative panels in Deeti’s shrine, and this ‘memory temple’ allows Ghosh to provide their back stories from Sea of Poppies, providing just enough of the plot and characters to make sense, without being a re-telling.

The first panel is Deeti’s. It shows The Parting, when Kalua escaped an unjustified sentence of death by fleeing from the Ibis (a shipload of indentured labour). In the lifeboat with him are the lascars Jodu and Serang Ali and two convicts: Ah Fatt (from China) and Neel (from Bengal). Still aboard the Ibis are Paulette Lambert escaping marriage; Baboo Nob Kissin the overseer; Zachary Reid, the second mate; and Deeti, pregnant with Kalua’s child.

Paulette’s panel depicts her subsequent meeting with the botanist Mr Penrose from the ship Redruth and her rescue from a derelict botanic garden. Deeti asks Neel to draw a panel which records his part in the clan’s saga, and he takes over the story. He draws Seth Bahramji (Ah Fatt’s father) and his ship the Anahita, and so begins the story of the opium trade in Canton, side-by-side, and eventually intersecting with Paulette’s quest to find the elusive Golden Camellia.

To see the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2011/11/13/ri...(less)

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Apr 25, 2013 Deepa Agarwal rated it 4 of 5 stars

The continuing saga of the history of the Opium Wars, which had its genesis in the poppy fields of India. The tide of history is poised to deposit a new commercial landmark on Asian shores, namely Hong Kong. An old regime struggles to maintain its sovereignty against a determined adversary even as we attempt to decipher the portents. The narrative, with its numerous strands of story, is as engaging as any of Ghosh's earlier novels of which The Glass Palace with its tragic theme of dispossession...more

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should one read sea of poppies first to understand river of smokes ? or is it required that it be read in series only ?	9	57	Dec 16, 2012 09:47pm

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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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“If the charter of your liberties entails death and despair for untold multitudes, then it is nothing but a license for slaughter.” — 3 people liked it

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River of Smoke (Ibis Trilogy #2)

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