Sea of Poppies

           by Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh is a story-teller of the highest order and, in Sea of Poppies, he weaves several tales together bound by the limits of time, class, poppies, and above all else the sea. It is the sea that permeates the stories of various men and women and that provides the thread that ties this book together. He deftly opens the book with three paragraphs that limn three basic motifs for the novel: the sea, poppies, and the village; a village that is the starting point for Deeti, the first of many people whose stories will emerge throughout the novel. On the sea we meet Zachary Reid, but more importantly we are introduce to his ship, the Ibis, which becomes an important character in the author's sea of stories.
The novelist is notable for his use of language. Not since Rushdie have I encountered the brilliance and bounty penned by an author. That bounty is magnified by the appendage of a forty-three page section entitled "The Ibis Chrestomathy" which, as a chrestomathy or selection of literary passages, serves as more than a glossary and can be read in its own right. Ultimately, the author's ability to recreate a particular time and place and the way he intertwined the characters' stories were the best aspects of this novel. In spite of moments were I, if only fleetingly, felt that some of the individual events were contrived the overarching themes, motifs, and design of the novel moved it beyond these moments and made it a great read.

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