- which is Amitav Ghosh's 'Sea of Poppies'. This one book makes worthwhile all the terrible pieces of pseudo literature I've wasted so many hours on this summer. The characters are beautifully drawn, so that you can see them in your head, their mannerisms, their accents, their colloquialisms, each a product of their particular society, each breaking out of their particular confines. The settings are unbelievably well imagined - its hard to believe that this is set so many years ago - it seems as though the author has been there, seen it, heard them talk - its all made very immediate, very present.
The story is incredibly global in scope - far more so than so many stories set in the present day. It passes through rural and urban India, China, the Mauritius, all through the opium supply chain - the fields where it was grown, the factories where it was processed, the ports where it was loaded, the ships that carried it, and to China where it was finally sold. And all along the way, the people who were enslaved by it - some who had given up their food crops to serve the empires growth - and others who had simply fallen prey to the drug, and given up everything else. The book recognizes how much of a person's identity was caught up in the enormous class, caste, religion, and racial differences that divided people - with each person having to cross their own particular barrier simply in order to survive.
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