For one thing, there are so many of them, and most of them do not meet until halfway through the book. They’re wonderful creations, these people, but I’ll confess that for the first half of the book I found it a struggle to get to know them. So there are a lot of characters-many more than I’ve mentioned here–and each one has a story. And there’s Baboo Nob Kissin, an accountant who eventually becomes convinced that one of the other characters is in fact Krishna in human guise. Neel Rattan is an upper-caste Raja trying to juggle his debts, his mistress, the women she brings with her everywhere, and his wife and son. Paulette Lambert is a young French woman who has been raised in an unconventional manner by her botanist father and her wet nurse, who is the mother of Jodu, Paulette’s childhood playmate and best friend. He owes a great deal of his career success to Serang Ali, the head of the lascar crew that served on the Ibis. Zachary Reid, the mixed-race son of a Maryland freedwomen, has just arrived in India as a sailor on the former slave ship, the Ibis. Deeti, the first character we meet, lives in a village outside Ghazipur with her opium-addicted husband and their daughter. The characters hail from a variety of social classes and cultures.

The book is set in India in 1838, just before the Opium Wars. Differences in race, social class, educational level, language, and cultural background can create barriers that make communication and understanding a struggle.Īs a reader, I initially felt profoundly separated from the characters in Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies. It can be difficult to get to know people who are different from us.

Sea of poppies review