Sea of Poppies

Superb story and exceptional narration. I had never heard of the author Amitav Ghosh before my wife and I settled into Pistoia, a smallish town in the heart of Tuscany, for a five week stay. We envisioned Pistoia as a pleasant refuge and convenient haven on the rail lines between more famous parts of Italy- Rome, Florence, Venice, Pisa, etc. However, as we explored this town we found ourselves enchanted by the people, the architecture and the art. We were surprised to learn that, at month’s end, Pistoia was to play host to the 14th Annual Pistoia Dialogues, an international celebration of anthropology, the humanities and environmental justice. 2023’s recipient of the Dialogue’s recognition was none other than Amitav Ghosh. This was the impetus for my surprised and surprising discovery of a distinguished author who has been writing for forty years. I found myself enthralled by the humanity, compassion, and breadth of Gosh’s writing which incorporates within itself immense landscapes, historical epochs, and the cruelty and compassion of human relationships that really has few parallels in literary efforts. Sea of Poppies is the third Ghosh novel I have read in a short time. It begins one such fictional account that presents the very real human and environmental saga of the opium trade by depicting the deliberate, cynical exploitation of human beings on an intimate scale that makes it impossible to overlook the tragic impact both then and now. The fact that, more than 150 years later, our world continues to be ravaged by an “opioid crisis” speaks to the terrible destruction caused by human exploitation of human hunger for the fruit of the poppy.

amitav ghoshs magical words are lost with the authors terrible pronunciations and accents