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A Novel
by Amitav Ghosh
Book Reviewed by:A prophetic novel of remarkable insight, beauty, and humanity set in the Sundarbans, an immense labyrinth of tiny islands on the easternmost coast of India.
The Hungry Tide is a very contemporary story of adventure and
unlikely love, identity and history, set in one of the most
fascinating regions on the earth. Off the easternmost coast of
India, in the Bay of Bengal, lies the immense labyrinth of tiny
islands known as the Sundarbans.
For settlers here, life is
extremely precarious. Attacks by deadly tigers are common. Unrest
and eviction are constant threats. Without warning, at any time,
tidal floods rise and surge over the land, leaving devastation in
their wake. In this place of vengeful beauty, the lives of three
people from different worlds collide. Piya Roy is a young marine
biologist, of Indian descent but stubbornly American, in search of a
rare, endangered river dolphin.
Her journey begins with a disaster,
when she is thrown from a boat into crocodile-infested waters.
Rescue comes in the form of a young, illiterate fisherman, Fokir.
Although they have no language between them, Piya and Fokir are
powerfully drawn to each other, sharing an uncanny instinct for the
ways of the sea. Piya engages Fokir to help with her research and
finds a translator in Kanai Dutt, a businessman from Delhi whose
idealistic aunt and uncle are longtime settlers in the Sundarbans.
As the three of them launch into the elaborate backwaters, they are
drawn unawares into the hidden undercurrents of this isolated world,
where political turmoil exacts a personal toll that is every bit as
powerful as the ravaging tide. Already an international success, The
Hungry Tide is a prophetic novel of remarkable insight, beauty, and
humanity.
The Tide Country
Kanai spotted her the moment he stepped onto the crowded platform: he was
deceived neither by her close-cropped black hair nor by her clothes, which
were those of a teenage boy — loose cotton pants and an oversized white
shirt. Winding unerringly through the snack vendors and tea sellers who were
hawking their wares on the station’s platform, his eyes settled on her slim,
shapely figure. Her face was long and narrow, with an elegance of line
markedly at odds with the severity of her haircut. There was no bindi on
her
forehead and her arms were free of bangles and bracelets, but on one of her
ears was a silver stud, glinting brightly against the sun-deepened darkness of
her skin.
Kanai liked to think that he had the true connoisseur’s ability to
both praise and appraise women, and he was intrigued by the way she held
herself, by the unaccustomed delineation of her stance. It occurred to him
suddenly that perhaps, despite her ...
Amitav Ghosh, the author of 4 previous novels including The Glass Palace (which you'll find at BookBrowse) spent four years researching this book, including living in a small village in the Sundarbans for some weeks. It's a gorgeous book that works on a number of levels - part love story, part political history and part meticulously researched environmental study. As Publishers Weekly puts it, 'One doesn't so much read Ghosh's masterful fifth novel as inhabit his characters and the alluring if treacherous Sundarban archipelago.' The Sundarbans describe the delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers on the Bay of Bengal, some of which is in India but mostly in Bangladesh. The area, which has been designated a World Heritage Site and Biosphere Reserve, is intersected by a complex network of tidal waterways, mudflats and small islands of salt-tolerant mangrove forests, with a wide variety of native fauna including 260 bird species, Bengal tigers, estuarine crocodiles and Indian pythons, and about 4 million humans. A century ago a wealthy Scot attempted to set up a Marxist-style utopia on one of the flood-plagued islands. Ghosh's uncle was a teacher and manager in the project, and this family history became the starting point for his research. For more about the Sundarbans see the sidebar...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
The estuarine
delta of the Sundarbans is a
harsh area prone to natural
disasters, such as the cyclone
in 1970 which killed 300,000
people. During 'normal' cyclones
the mangrove swamps absorb much
of the first shock which is why
the people of the area do not
build close to the sea.
Despite this a business group
have ambitious plans to build an
enormous tourism complex in the
region, with everything from
'virgin beaches' to shopping
centers, restaurants and
mini-golf courses.
As ...
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