River of Smoke: A Novel (The Ibis Trilogy, 2)

Ghosh's Sea of Poppies was one of the highlights of my reading year in 2009, so I had high expectations for this second volume in the "Ibis Trilogy." That's always going to be a challenge for any book. It's the "Godfather" syndrome. How do you make a sequel that is the equal of a brilliant first work? The answer seems to be: unless your name is Coppola, or maybe Tolkien, you probably don't. I was worried about this one; for me, it got off to a very slow start. I'm sure this was partly because it had been so long since I finished the first one, but it was also partly because the beginning just didn't work for me. But then the story got going, and the more it progressed, the more I was drawn in. This one mostly takes place in the months just prior to the outbreak of the Opium War in 1839 between British forces determined to protect the lucrative (but illegal) opium trade, and vastly out-equipped Chinese forces attempting to stop it. It's a historical period that I know fairly well, and though the outcome of the large events was never in doubt, the individual lives and the completely believable details on which Ghosh builds his plot brought the era to life. It's hard to understand the burgeoning opium trade of the 19th century as anything other than hypocritical and immoral, though of course it is more complicated than a simple story of Western predators and Chinese victims. But the willingness to put profit before morality, to hide hypocrisy under a cover of "free trade," is dramatized here with great effect.Linguistically, Ghosh's books are great fun to read, maybe as much fun as I have ever had reading a novel. You can't possibly pause and look up every word you don't know. They come from dozens of dialects and create a rhythm and a texture that are fascinating and effective. You don't need to know what they mean, partly because they simply carry you along for a crazy-quilt ride of inventiveness (he may have even made some up himself--who cares?), and partly because context usually conveys enough specific meaning to encourage you to move along.Despite my initial misgivings, there is no question about it: I will be checking periodically for the publication date of the final volume in the trilogy. I just hope I don't have to wait as long.

This novel follows on from the marvellous epic Sea of Poppies, which followed the fortunes of a group of people eventually brought together on the Ibis, a ship carrying indentured labourers and some prisoners to the island of Mauritius. However, River of Smoke is not a sequel in the conventional sense and can be read and enjoyed without having read the earlier book.The story opens decades after the Ibis was caught in a storm and five of the men on board escaped, presumed drowned. Deeti, now the aged matriarch of a family in Mauritius, oversees an annual pilgrimage to a shrine in the mountains where she has painted scenes from the Ibis and vivified memories of her long lost husband, one of the five escapees. Neel, who also arrived on the Ibis, joins in the ceremony and begins to recall events that followed on from the storm.Neel and Ah Fatt were among the five men who escaped from the Ibis and the novel follows their fortunes as they head to Singapore. There they meet Ah Fatt's father, a merchant named Bahram Modi, who employs Neel but leaves his son behind as the ship heads to Canton. Bahram's ship was also caught in the storm and some of its opium cargo ruined, but there is still enough on board for Bahram to become a very rich man and he has staked his fortune and reputation on being able to sell the drug in the Chinese market.The illegal drug trade, selling opium to the Chinese, was the creation of British merchants who had to find some way of redressing Britain's trade imbalance with China. The British were too fond of Chinese goods - tea, silk, porcelain - and were plunging their country into debt as a result. You can see the modern parallel. Opium was the ideal solution: it could be produced very cheaply in British India, the customers became addicted so forfeited their capacity to make a free choice, and the trade was illegal in China, so the profits were enormous. Some of the merchant houses that grew sleek and fat on illegal drug dealing in the nineteenth century remain pillars of the commercial establishment today.The mendacity of the European and American merchants drips from the pages of this book. Bahram is the odd man out, a wealthy trader from a Parsi family in India who is included in the merchants' circle because of his money but also because he is useful in the battle with the Chinese government. The Chinese are adamant that they want to stamp out the drug trade while the merchants are equally adamant that `free trade' must prevail. But while Bahram is a useful pawn in the game, he is in the end an Indian, and the ever-present racism means that he will never be truly accepted. When push comes to shove, he is expendable.The behaviour of the Chinese is, unlike that of the merchants, civilised and just. Their crusade against the drug trade is appreciated by some of the less avaricious in the foreign enclave, but greed is dominant and greed does not abide civilisation or reason. Much of the novel plays out the battle between the drug cartels and the Chinese authorities. The result is a pyrrhic victory for the Chinese, for the result as we know from history was the Opium Wars - western enforcement of an illegal drug trade and the creation of mass addiction in China.Neel becomes a go-between in the clash between foreign and Chinese interests. He is torn between the wrongs he sees in the trade on the one hand, and his deep loyalty to Bahram, whom he sees as a decent but tragic man, on the other.Interwoven with this theme is the story of Paulette, another character who once sailed on the Ibis, and Robin, her childhood friend. Paulette's father was a renowned botanist but his death left her destitute. She is taken on by `Fitcher' Penrose, an old friend of her father, to go and trade plant specimens in China. Penrose has grown wealthy from plant nurseries in England and from the trade in plants between the Americas and China. The nineteenth century was an extraordinary time for the movement of plant species around the globe, assisted by botanical gardens set up by the colonial powers. Tea changed the culture of Britain just as rubber altered the face of south-east Asian agriculture, and crops like sugar saw the movement of thousands of labourers from their homelands to distant shores.In contrast to the drug trade, the trade in plants carried out by Penrose and Paulette shows that links between China and foreigners did not need to be exploitative or destructive. The work of the plant traders shows shared interests and pleasure in the beauty and utility of flowers and other shrubs. But even here the pervasive corrosion of the opium trade eventually exacts its toll.Much of the story in Canton is related in letters written by Robin to Paulette. Robin is an artist and determinedly homosexual. His interest in Chinese art and painting techniques is mediated through his friendships with Chinese men. Many of the merchants, including Bahram, have second families with local women and this was a common feature of colonialism, as it is with transnational businessmen today. Robin is idealistic about his relationships, but those of the merchants are often characterised by a cruel preference for reputation over affection.As the battle between the drug dealers and the Chinese government comes to a head, the lives of Neel, Bahram, Paulette and Robin are thrown off course, as were the lives of many who sailed on the Ibis at the end of Sea of Poppies. Neel many years later finds Robin's letters to Paulette and these along with his own memories help him to recreate this extraordinary saga.River of Smoke is a long, complex and strongly written novel. It uses the argot and saltiness of nineteenth century language to good effect, and brings to life the physical surroundings in which the characters live and work, and the strange microcosm of a trading enclave on foreign soil. The world is full of risk and opportunity, and how people deal with these and the consequences of their decisions reveal both good and evil, bravery and cowardice.Amitav Ghosh has promised to continue writing about the characters from the Ibis, and it will be interesting to see which ones appear in the next instalment. The story in River of Smoke is rich and absorbing. Read it, and if you have not done so already, set yourself afloat in the Sea of Poppies as well. You will be well rewarded.

Full of adventure

I started reading “River of Smoke” quite a long while after I finished reading “Sea of Poppies” by the same Author. I thus cannot be sure which of the characters in the second book are taken from the first – and this might (slightly) influence my opinion of “River of Smoke”.Maybe because Sea of Poppies was the first book I read by Ghosh, it made an impression on me, enough to read another one of his. But I must admit – the RoS is not as exciting and as gripping as SoP was, (or at least as I remember it was) there seems to be a lot of pages which gave me the feeling that the Author “gets paid by the page”, long drawn out scenes/letters which could have been cut in half. And of course the same problems of the first book are here too – lots of Hindustani, Chinese, Bengali, Pidgin English and who knows what other terms, completely incomprehensible to an English Reader. Sometimes the terms don’t really matter, sometimes they make a sentence or a whole passage impossible to understand.But, having said all that, the book is a very detailed and historically accurate description of the period preceding the Opium War, unfortunately though the war itself is glossed over with a sentence or two. It has a few pages of the aftermath of this most unjustified war) It was still gripping enough for me to keep on reading, and it gave me a much better understanding of the powers that England, America and France had over the “backward” Country of China.It’s quite possible that had I read “The River of Smoke” first, I would have rated it as 4 or even 5 Stars.

Love this author - Glass Palace and Hungry Tide are 2 of my favourite books of all time. (Alongside Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible). I adored Sea Of Poppies, first book in the trilogy, so ordered this and the third book. Majority of the action in this part takes place in Canton. Cannot recommend it highly enough. Superb! Pacey, hilarious in parts, especially where Bahram takes spoken English literally, and also extremely informative, if you are interested in life in Canton at the time of the run up to the Opium Wars. A little word about the language - I have lived in France, Kolkata, India, Cape Town, South Africa, and in Xi'an, Central China amongst other places, so have some French, Bangla and Mandarin and I am very familiar with English spoken using word orders from other tongues. I felt very much at home with the pidgin, but I think a glossary would assist readers without my somewhat unusual language background.

River of Smike is the 2nd in the Ibis Trilogy. I first read Sea of Poppies (in paperback) and was so enthralled that I ordered River of Smoke the same day that I finished Sea of Poppies and I was not dissappopinted. Sea of Poppies deals with the growth and production of opium in India in the mid 1800's and also the way in which people were transported from India to provide cheap labour in (I think) Mauritius once the slave trade had been abolished. I became so involved with the characters that I could not wait to follow their story. River of Smoke picks up one two or three of characters and tells their story when they end up, by various means, in the trading enclave outside Canton. The stories are cleverly interwoven and the revolvs around the built up of the tensions between the Chinese who want to stop the importation of opium and the English (the East India Comapny), Amercains and Indians who are make such incredible profits from transporting opium from India to China. It culminates with the traders being driven from Canton immediatly prior to the opium wars.This is a fascinating epic, not only are the characters draw you in but the books are brilliantly researched and very informative. This is an era of history which was not taught in schools in my time and of which I was woefully ignorant. I am now eagerly awaiting volume 3 in the trilogy. Highly recommended.

This work is a work of great scholarship and a very thoughtful treatment of great themes: trade, globalisation, culture, identity, ethics. The thoughtful consideration of the characters and themes is set against the beginning of the First Opium War. There is much h in this novel that sheds light on Sino-Western relations. This is not just a story or yarn; we are totally immersed into the world described through language and the huge amount of detail. Anyone who wants to understand this very sinister and dark page of this Time should read this book.

have to say that at first i found this a little dissappointing after 'the sea of poppies'. i loved that...loved the completely mixed group of people on the ship, loved the lascars language, loved the moveble feast. but...i knew this was a trilogy about the opium wars...so it had to stop travelling, and get centered in canton and the despicable trade. when i was at university i studied chinese civilization as an outside course, and i wrote an essay entitled 'the opium wars. the most indefensible conflict in british history. discuss.' well...here is the discusson! it is actually so well written it makes you angry...especially as for years afterwards the chinese were portrayed at the perpertrators of opium dens...when it was the british who caused them. sorry to go about the history...but this novel is so fresh that it seems like its just happened.and yet there is so much more here...some of the letters from ralph to puggly actually made me laugh out loud. you just cant but feel sorry for mr moddie, not that he is an innocent..but he is an indian, and also ground down. and the whole passage about meeting napoleon on st helena..bloody magic. this is a huge book...it encompasses the history of the whole time, but told through people who are small players. i suggest you just download it...and read it after the sea of poppies.,..though it stand up well enough on its own, its nice to have background.

Tedious and long-winded and, at times, overly complicated. I persevered with this book because I don't like giving up on a read and it's something I rarely do - but one this occasion it crossed my mind on a few occasions. There's very little in the way of a story to warrant the length of this book - sure, the insight into the whole opium trade was interesting but again, way too long for almost no story. I had high expectations as I like historical fiction but this didn't cut it for me.