Sea of Poppies (Ibis Trilogy, #1)

So what did I do on my paternity break, other than the usual diapers, who-does-he-look-like’s, and cooking six meals a day? In a lull in programming (my major hobby), I opened Sea of Poppies and found myself a couple of days later, wrapping up the Chrestomathy at the end and tweeting @GhoshAmitav asking whether Neel was really his ancestor. That question at least was answered indirectly. Turns out, others had the same question, and when Jonathan Spence, noted Yale-based Sinologist, shared the stage with Amitav Ghosh at the opening keynote of the Chindia Dialogues (audio-only available on mobile, thank you Asia Society web designers!), Ghosh admitted that the appendix was written in a playful manner “in the voice of one of the characters”.

That whole dialogue with Spence and Ghosh is scintillating, in part because both have (to this American-Midwest ear) enjoyable accents, and in part because Spence, a historian, is so complementary to Ghosh the novelist’s creations, this novel and its sequel River of Smoke. Spence explains how he believed that opium just began popping out of the ground in India in the 1790s, and it wasn't until he read these two novels (trilogy finale on the way) that he even thought to ask just what that simple abstract idea really meant, in this messy, complicated, intricate world. He says, “The trade aspect is clear but the emotional aspect is very new to me… I had never imagined how the shipments were prepared, paid for, trafficked… A new world is being born out of this savagely condemned trade.”

It is in this space that Amitav Ghosh excels. With incredibly diverse and deep readings of sources, History's scattered rags weave themselves into a luxuriant tapestry, its multitudinous shards assemble into a stained-glass masterwork, at the command of the Novelist, who shows that History as an emotionally-complete experience is possible to write.

We get a rich bouquet of lives that find themselves in Calcutta and its environs: the half-black American carpenter, the English prices of finance, the Malay lascar, the Hindu priest-turned-merchant, the child of a French botanist raised by Bengali Muslims, the opium addicts. The worldviews of such divers a group of individuals is seamlessly conveyed, from the Brahmin who appreciates his Englishman employer doesn't kick him (he would have to take a bath), the ensari‘d woman who invites a friend into her veil to exchange personal information, … Wealth, education, religion, these are all dimensions in which Ghosh's characters form a dense matrix.

But an experiential hi/story that satisfies emotionally can also satisfy intellectually, and fully does. The questions that History leaves abstract Amitav Ghosh embraces, or at least nods at. If you're an East India Company, with money and soldiers, just how do you get small farmers to grow poppy, instead of wheat? How exactly is it picked, purified, and packaged? How is it conveyed to faroff Canton? How do you smoke opium (oh, you can eat it too?)? How does it feel? How does a multi-ethnic seafaring crew communicate? How many inches separate a sleeping lascar's face from the backside of another? And just how do you ship a rare plant from Mauritius (an island half-way between India and Madagascar) to Europe, ensuring it gets enough but not too much light and air and water to reach its destination alive through typhoons and the like? True completeness is not possible of course (thank you Herr Dr. Gödel) but unlike most fiction, where I am constantly reminded of the cuts suffered by Reality in the hands of a writer pinning it to the page, Reality or a cunning simulation of it was able to distract me fully till the end.

I'm what university departments call a heritage speaker of Hindi, and enjoyed the incessant stream of half-understood words. I loved the English characters use of occasional Hindiisms. I really wonder how I would have perceived the novel had Ghosh been more magnanimous to his non-native readers: I urge more fiction writers to use this device so I can find out.

I really look forward to River of Smoke because China is my favorite place, and I can't wait to see how this Arabic-speaking, Cantonese-learning Indian writer of English takes on the great 天下.

Premier volume d’une trilogie prometteuse, dont les suites ne sont pas encore publiées en version originale, Un océan de pavots est un superbe roman d’aventures, une galerie riche en personnages de tous horizons. L’éditeur annonce d’emblée la volonté de l’auteur de ne pas inclure de lexique ou de glossaire, ainsi que son choix de ne pas annoncer les dialogues dits autrement qu’en anglais par des tirets. Choix curieux, d’autant que la version originale semble comporter un glossaire, incomplet certes, mais un glossaire quand même. Le nombre de mots et d’expressions est assez conséquent, le pidgin est largement utilisé, et il revient au lecteur d’en deviner le sens tout au long de la lecture. Bizarrement, on se fait vite à la chose, on plonge rapidement dans l’histoire, ou plutôt les histoires, car chaque personnage est largement présenté au lecteur. Le roman remplit bien son rôle de premier volume, il nous introduit dans une époque et un univers très bien documentés, et développe de nombreux personnages en dépeignant à la perfection leur passé, leur contexte social, etc.
Toute cette introduction pousse les protagonistes vers un destin commun, et avouons-le, le final est un insoutenable cliffhanger, mais on en redemande !
Un excellent moment donc, et je surveillerai de près la sortie du prochain volume, car au-delà d’une brève frustration, j’ai follement envie de retrouver ces personnages attachants et si différents les uns des autres.
Un beau voyage que je recommande !