River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh
Amitav Ghosh is an extraordinary writer, a visionary who reveals the world of the mid-nineteenth century. From Canton's Fanqui Town landing ghat at Jackass Point to the busy seaport of Calcutta, the author guides us to Singapore's "Wordy" clothing market, and even to Coptic Cairo.
The Ibis reappears from Sea of Poppies, bound for Mauritius. The orphan Paulette turns up in the now-unkempt Pamplemousse Gardens, where her aunt once worked as a botanist. There she meets the Cornish nurseryman Mr. Penrose, who hires her to care for his onboard plant collection.
While The British East India Company seeks to extend its profit and influence from the opium trade. Sir Joseph Banks orchestrates the journeys of nursery ships with onboard gardeners. They ply the oceans to China and back, carrying exotic new plants for Kew Gardens.
In Canton, Robin Chinnery, a talented young gay artist, son of a British father and a Bengali mother, has just found his social and artistic milieu when politics threatens to overturn his life. We see the situation through his eyes as he writes regular newsy letters to his childhood friend Paulette, now ship's gardener on board the Redruth. This ship remains anchored off the coast while her captain seeks out a rare golden camellia to take back to England.
Meanwhile, caught up in the toils of feudalism and colonialism, an international group of merchants in Fanquitown, the foreign quarter of Canton, carry on the trade in opium. The black mud is making fortunes for traders, even as it ruins the lives of those who become addicted to the fragrant smoke.
Bahram Modi is a Parsee merchant from Bombay. He is trying to raise his fortunes and secure respect from his in-laws by trading in opium. Neel, once a rajah and now a branded criminal, is working as Modi's munchi-ji, a multi-lingual secretary, translator and news-gatherer.
We meet the members of the Chamber of Commerce in the foreign quarter in Canton, mostly unrepentent opium pushers. Few among them respect the new anti-drug laws of the Chinese and give up the lucrative trade. In this chamber, we briefly spy actual historic characters, including Mr. Jardine, who along with Mr. Matheson, established the still extant Jardine Matheson in 1832.
Besides its wonderful cast of characters, this book has many brilliant lines which can be applied today as they could in the days of the pirate traders. One particularly cynical remark by an unregenerate free trade businessman is the comment the willingness to "let people focus on democracy while we (traders) get on with running the world."
This book has an incredibly complex plot that harks back to the prequel. It is also loaded with linguistic and cultural information, including words and phrases from a variety of languages. Indeed, the writer, a linguistic virtuoso, is not averse to throwing in some hilarious zingers, as when he informs us that the Chinese call the British "I says," the French "Merdes," and the Indians "Achas," literally teas.
Ghosh is a multi-sensory painter who treats his readers to a feast of the sights, sounds and smells seen through the eyes of the artist Robin in his regular letters to Paulette. In childhood, her pet name was Pugli, and the epithets Robin uses for her in his letters vary from the Countess of Puglinsberg to the Maharani of Pugglesnagore.
This second of the planned trilogy was published in 2011; I eagerly await the third.