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Amitav Ghosh releases today his much-awaited novel ‘Sea of Poppies’

Amitav Ghosh’s much-awaited novel ‘Sea of Poppies’,the first in new trilogy, is being released today simultaneously in India and the UK.

‘Sea of Poppies’has been hailed as ‘the most eagerly awaited fiction title of the year’, an ‘epic work of exceptional beauty and power’It is an ambitious work that spans three continents and two centuries is not only about colonialism but also about, how people lived, laughed and loved. In writing this novel, Amitav Ghosh has been influenced by Melville and Conrad.

‘Sea of Poppies’ is more explicitly critical of imperialism.It is not about any one thing, any more than the past or the present are about one thing.There can be no doubt that colonialism was the dominant political reality of 19 th century India.Yet it is important to remember that it was just one aspect of that reality: people also lived and laughed and loved, as indeed people do everywhere no matter what their political circumstances. Looking back at the 19 th century, the striking feature is the resilience, the resistance, the willingness to change and the determination to learn.The past cannot and ought not to be planed down to one dimension.

There are so many different stories unfolding simultaneously on the Ibis that it is impossible to impose one over-riding narrative on the collective journey.To acknowledge that the past is complicated  is not to say that we should turn our backs on it either in shame or because we just want to move on.One reason for this is that colonialism is not really in the past, even in the Indian Subcontinent, Pakistan for instance is in a situation, where re-colonisation is a possibility.The present incarnations of Empire is in fact uncannily like the old one.

‘Sea of Poppies’ is the first in a projected trilogy, painted on a magisterial canvas stretching from Agrarian North India and Bengal to China and Mauritius.This breadth is reflective of Ghosh’s subject- the enormous reach of British imperialism from the Americas to Asia,Africa and Australasia and the globe spanning displacements that millions endured.

Sea of Poppies’ uses the imagination with precision. Historical research and imaginative license,work together to illumine the nuances of existence in another time.

 

 

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