In terms of ideas, Ghosh does have a few pertinent points to make about the evils of colonialism and modern capitalism. A habit that Ghosh insists on turning into a (bad) joke just about every time she speaks and causes him to slip into some alarming constructions when the mystic Baboo is on the scene: 'Come, Baboo Nob Kissin… I will walk you to the boathouse. We can tell she's French because she says her words in a funny order and is constantly subject to malapropism. Things get even worse when the French girl, Paulette, is on the scene. Oh old loocher knew hot to really put on a nuach all right!'ĭid people really talk like that? Even if they did, Ghosh doesn't convince me that this is real dialogue.

Sittringies and tuckiers for the natives… Cunchunees whirling and ticky-taw bos besting their tobblers. 'Now there was another chuckmuck sight for you! Rows of cursies for the sahibs and mems to sit on. No doubt the vocabulary is authentic, but many passages such as the following smell too much of the lamp, and are baffling: The worst offence in this regard is an insistence on using dialogue culled from Hobson-Jobson.

Ghosh's insistence on making the most of his considerable researches can occasionally be a virtue – a room-by-room description of an opium factory that is an undoubted tour-de-force – but more often it's a drag.

He fearlessly braves rising waters on leaky boats on-board riots starchy English dinner parties sadistic first mates… There's plenty of a drama when he isn't on the scene too: a dramatic rescue from the ancient rite of Suttee a no holds barred description of the incontinence resulting from opium withdrawal wrestling bouts a court case…Įven so, it's stretching things to describe The Sea Of Poppies as a genuine page-turner. He's annoying and his character is paper-thin, but Ghosh throws him into enough predicaments to ensure that there isn't much time to muse on his deficiencies. This latter is the moral, intelligent, death-defying, romantic and very attractive Zachary Reid, the second mate of the Ibis, and first friend of all the friendless. Among the various clichés are spank-happy English sailors and capitalists (who get their kicks from whipping 'natives' or allowing their own bottoms to be subject to 'chastisement'), deposed Indian nobles, noble Indian peasants, exotic Chinamen, even more exotic religious mystics (one labouring under the extraordinary name of Baboo Nob Kissin), attractive French women and – essentially for such a Hollywood-hungry opus – a hero from America. In a suspiciously film-like manner, the story cuts between a number of characters who make their way onto the Ibis, a ship bound for Mauritius with a hold filled with emigrants, prisoners and coolie labourers instead of its more usual cargo of opium (since the lucrative trade with China is temporarily blocked).

Sea of poppies novel