{"id":723,"date":"2011-11-10T16:06:50","date_gmt":"2011-11-10T21:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/indianamericanstory.wordpress.com\/?p=723"},"modified":"2014-12-30T21:41:54","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T21:41:54","slug":"amitav-ghosh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/amitav-ghosh\/","title":{"rendered":"Amitav Ghosh Discusses River of Smoke"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Aditya Desai<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Bengali-born South Asian writer Amitav Ghosh was in D.C. recently for a reading at Politics & Prose, a local bookstore. He discussed his new novel, River of Smoke<\/em>, the continuation of his 2008 tome Sea of Poppies<\/em>, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.<\/p>\n

River of Smoke <\/em>is the second in a sweeping epic of his proposed Ibis<\/em> trilogy (named after the trader\/slave ship that the character\u2019s lives are linked to) takes place during the 19th\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Century, plotting the rise of the East India Company over opium trade across South Asia.<\/p>\n

Similar to the portrait in his book jacket, of a whispy, silver-haired, scarf-wearing cosmopolitan, Ghosh adopted an introspective nature as he read a small portion of his new novel. As the local Washington readership, of all ethnicity and age, listened to his temperate but emphatic narration, it was clear he had a genuine love of these characters and the world. The sequel was an inevitable need to live a while longer in this world far removed from him and his audience.<\/p>\n

\"Ghosh<\/a>

Amitav Ghosh reading at Politics & Prose, Washington, D.C.<\/p><\/div>\n

After the reading, the floor was open to Q&A. Over the course of discussion, Ghosh described his initial hook into the novel as being the opposite of the more common migrant narratives that seem to dominate Indian American or Indian English literatures. He said, that instead of the \u201cmoment of arrival\u201d to the new land, he instead wanted to look at the \u201cmoment of departure\u201d from home.<\/p>\n

It was during this era in which the company\u2019s trade routes doubled as the journey trails of the first Indian migrants West \u2013 resulting in the diverse Indian communities across Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean today. The wide cast in the novels include not only Indian and British characters, but also American, Chinese, and French, making it a global conscious piece of fiction.<\/p>\n

Though the two novels don\u2019t depict this actual rise of migration, they provide a fresh flipside to thinking about how Indians have spanned their presence across the globe. As the works posit, India\u2019s fertile soil and supply of indentured servants allowed the East India Company to efficiently harvest poppy and produce of opium, which became one of the great economic and political commodities of the time.<\/p>\n

Even though Ghosh’s books attempt to draw parallels to today\u2019s global situation (i.e. Western financial stakes in China and India,) Poppies <\/em>and now Smoke<\/em> are ultimately works of fiction, and engrossing reads at that. Though, I personally have not gotten around to River of Smoke<\/em>, the first novel was a wonderful panorama of the men and women whose lives became caught up in these sweeps of power. Ghosh goes to great lengths as a writer to render each character vividly, as well as the time period, employing pidgin Hindoo-English dialogue and lush portrayals of Calcutta and the Ganges basin.<\/p>\n

Functioning on many levels\u2014from historical fiction, to adventure epic, to anthropological ensemble\u2014the novels are rich in discourses that can apply to wide net of readers. For the Indian American community, Ghosh\u2019s work certainly seems an apt extension of the grander history of South Asians crossing borders beyond the subcontinent.\u00a0Don\u2019t worry about reading the Sea of Poppies<\/em> and River of Smoke<\/em> in order\u2014Ghosh states they are both distinct, separate works\u2014a \u201cCalcutta book\u201d and a \u201cBombay book\u201d respectively.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s to the third, Mr Ghosh; perhaps bringing us the rest of the country in the same vibrant prose?<\/p>\n

Aditya Desai is pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland, College Park.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Aditya Desai Bengali-born South Asian writer Amitav Ghosh was in D.C. recently for a reading at Politics & Prose, a local bookstore. He discussed his new novel, River of Smoke, the continuation of his 2008 tome Sea of Poppies, which was shortlisted for the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beyond-bollywood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7623,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions\/7623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}