Amitav Ghosh

It is common knowledge that not everything in life can be fair and that not everyone gets treated equally. However, that does not mean that the unjust treatment of others is an any way acceptable. In the novel Sea Of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh uses the transportation of coolies, the opium trade, and the struggle of the lower class to unravel the exploiting power of colonialism and show how people with authority will do anything in order to maintain their power and feel righteous in doing so. One of the most powerful Characters in the novel is Mr. Burnham. He is an affluent self made European man, and most importantly he is the owner of the Ibis. He is not necessarily a hateful man but he is definitely an opportunist sometimes bordering on insensitive. He is proud of what he owns and it is…

The Shadow Lines (1988) is a Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel by Indian-Bengali writer Amitav Ghosh. He is no doubt one of the leaders of the global league, and no one would today dare categorise him as an ‘Indo-Anglian novelist’. We may say that Ghosh, in the tradition of Rushdie, is one of the key figures to have created that global league which every Indian writer would today aspire to join. In 1988, Amitav Ghosh published his second novel, titled as The Shadow Lines. Ghosh replaces the…

As technology advances and our harmful effects on the planet are becoming obvious, humans are increasingly more self-aware than before. In order to combat the realization, we have rapidly developed conservation efforts and methods to protect endangered species. Unfortunately, our universal adaptation to “save” Earth’s species resulted in several devastating effects. The largest of which influences humans. This scenario is best observed in the Sundarbans, as expressed in The Hungry Tide by Amitav…

uses the metaphor of mohonas to bring together rivers of language: …the mudbanks of the tide country are shaped not only by rivers of silt, but also by rivers of language: Bengali, English, Arabic, Hindi, Arakanese and who knows what else? Flowing into each other they create a proliferation of small worlds that hang suspended in the flow. And so it dawned on me: the tide country’s faith is something like one of its great mohonas, a meeting not just of many rivers, but a circular round about…

THE INTER PLAY OF REALITY AND ILLUSION IN THE SHADOW LINES Abstract Amitav Ghosh is an Indian author and novelist. Her novel portrays the political and historical consciousness along with known for his works in English language. His writings are unique and contributed a lot to Indian writing in English. Amitav Ghosh second novel The Shadow Lines (1988) presents the theme on nationalism, freedom, violence, memory and conflict between reality and…

Abstract: Most of the novels written after the publication of Midnight’s Children deals with the aspect which focuses on national history cutting across personal narratives. Most of the writers are deracinated from their roots: familial, cultural, national, religious and linguistics and therefore use polyphonic form to explore their past. It comes as no surprise to find that Amitav Ghosh is a writer concerned with India’s place in larger international cultural networks, whose fiction seems…

Amitav Ghosh boldly tackles political themes, both national and international. For human survival, a new perception of relationships must emerge” (Kapadia, 1990: 129). The novel focuses on the trauma of individual lives caught in a new world where they search for their identity and suffer physical and cultural displacement. Leaving one’s own motherland forcibly is not a happy state of affairs for any individual. They feel humiliated when they are compelled to migrate from their home and…

national identity in the novel The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh. Most often than not we are identified by the countries or for that matter the states we come from. These fragmentations brought about by the physical demarcations characterize our behavior in society. But the problem arise when these ‘lines’ are blurred which gives rise to confusion in personal and social space. The Shadow Lines is an innovative, intricate and celebrated…

Amitav Ghosh throws light on the imperialist modes of social, cultural and ecological dominance in his fourth novel The Glass Palace. The novel points out that how colonialization has brutally exploded in the South Asia and results into the environmental degradation. The novel is interlocked in the various historical events like colonization of Burma by the British, the First World War, and conquest of Japan over Russia, the intense changes wrought by World War II etc. It’s a story that…

‘Sea of Poppies’ is Amitav Ghosh’s first book in the Ibis Trilogy which was nominated for Man Booker Prize of 2008. Set in 1838 amidst the valuable and potent poppy fields, it brings together a truly diverse and international cast of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts, who, each for his or her own reason, board the Ibis, an old slaving-ship, which sails into the Indian Ocean at the end of the book. The book is a story of people brought together in spite of their differences, starting…