There is a glossary of sorts at the back, but after a few exchanges, you get the gist – which is just about what the characters themselves get as they attempt to bridge linguistic impasses. But it is the panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, that makes Sea of Poppies so breathtakingly alivea masterpiece from one of the worlds finest novelists.Īs the language departs from the concrete vocabulary of vessels and their parts, meaning breaks down, but the speakers forge ahead into delightful misunderstandings with unwittingly bawdy undertones. The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, the exotic backstreets of Canton. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will span continents, races, and generations. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a freespirited French orphan. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean its purpose, to fight Chinas vicious nineteenth-century Opium Wars. At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis.

Sea of poppies