Product Description

The new novel from the author of The Glass Palace, the widely-acclaimed bestseller. The Hungry Tide is a rich, exotic saga set in Calcutta and in the vast archipelago of islands in the Bay of Bengal.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1533116 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Review
'An exceptional writer.' Peter Matthieson'A novelist of dazzling ingenuity' San Francisco Chronicle'A distinctive voice, polished and profound' Times Literary Supplement'An absorbing story of a world in transition, brought to life through characters who love and suffer with equal intensity.' JM Coetzee'Ghosh is one of the most sympathetic post-colonial voices to be heard today. He looks at love and loyalty, and examines the question of Empire and responsibility, of tradition and modernity.' Ahdaf Souief'Ghosh has established himself as one of the finest prose writers of his generation of Indians writing in English' Financial Times'Amitav Ghosh is such a fascinating and seductive writer...a deeply serious writer, sure of his human and historical insights and confident in his ability to communicate them. I cannot think of another contemporary writer with whom it would be this thrilling to go so far, so fast' The Times'Ghosh seamlessly blends ideas about the power of the photographic image with unforgettable descriptions of nature -- in a thoroughly enjoyable, intelligent epic that's bound to win him a wide and grateful readership'. Kirkus Reviews'Ghosh's voice remains distinctive...it has a lush and sensuous quality which renders even the most historical of passages wonderfully readable.' Belfast Telegraph'As always Ghosh wields his pen lightly, with supple prose being the order of the day.' Sunday Business Post'Ghosh vividly brings to life the history of Burma and Malaya over a century of momentous change in this teeming, multigenerational saga.' Publishers Weekly'You feel that Ghosh speaks with the true voice of the sub-continent, wise, superstitious and set firmly in age-old ritual.' Birmingham Post'I will never forget the young and old Rajkumar, Dolly, the Princesses, the forests of teak, the wealth that made families and wars. A wonderful novel. An incredible story.' Grace Paley

Outsiders are drawn into the exotic vortex of a remote Pacific archipelago. In a complex narrative filled with echoes of Naipaul and especially Conrad (with an occasional nod to Peter Matthiessen's At Play in the Fields of the Lord), Anglo-Indian author Ghosh (The Glass Palace, 2001, etc.) interweaves the fates of several natives and visitors to the pristine (if not primitive) Sundarban Islands in the Bay of Bengal. Marine biologist Piya(la) Roy, raised in the United States by Indian parents, has come to the islands to study a rare and endangered marine species, the Irrawaddy dolphin. New Delhi businessman Kanai Dutt (creator of a thriving translation business) is visiting his aunt Nilima, and perusing the history (of the islands' exploitation by "people who made a push to protect the wildlife here, without regard to the human costs," and a failed utopian "revolution" waged by settlers and their sympathizers) contained in the journal of Kanai's uncle Nirmal, a probable victim of political murder. Matters are further complicated when Kanai serves as translator on Piya's research expedition, in a fishing boat piloted by taciturn islander Fokir, the adult son of an embattled woman (Kusum) who may have been Nirmal's lover, and appears to have shared his fate. Ghosh tells their stories in parallel narratives suffused with an impressive wealth of historical, cetological and ethnographic detail (which isn't always successfully dramatized). The result is a fascinating tapestry, in which idealistic motives and carefully preserved secrets alike are vulnerable to a world of various predators-a truth expressed in the beguiling legend of the islands' "protectress" in combat with a malevolent "tiger-demon," and during a climactic tropical storm followed by a fateful "tidal surge." A bit bumpy; still, overall, Ghosh's fifth is one of his most interesting. (Kirkus Reviews)

The Independant
'Skillfully depicts this truly vengeful place...where fantasy and reality constantly overlap'

From the Publisher
An Indian myth says that when the river Ganges first descended from the heavens, the force of the cascade was so great that the earth would have been destroyed if it had not been for the god Shiva, who tamed the torrent by catching it in his dreadlocks. It is only when the Ganges approaches the Bay of Bengal that it frees itself and separates into thousands of wandering strands. The result is the Sundarbans, an immense stretch of mangrove forest, a half-drowned land where the waters of the Himalayas merge with the incoming tides of the sea.

It is this vast archipelago of islands that provides the setting for Amitav Ghosh’s new novel. In the Sundarbans the tides reach more than 100 miles inland and every day thousands of hectares of forest disappear only to re-emerge hours later. Dense as the mangrove forests are, from a human point of view it is only a little less barren than a desert. There is a terrible, vengeful beauty here, a place teeming with crocodiles, snakes, sharks and man-eating tigers. This is the only place on earth where man is more often prey than predator.

And it is into this terrain that an eccentric, wealthy Scotsman named Daniel Hamilton tried to create a utopian society, of all races and religions, and conquer the might of the Sundarbans. In January 2001, a small ship arrives to conduct an ecological survey of this vast but little-known environment, and the scientists on board begin to trace the journeys of the descendants of this society.

Customer Reviews

A great read
The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh is a story about love and life, politics and ecology, nature weather and myth, set in the Ganghes/Brahmaputra delta in Sundabar, India. The language is straightforward, and the keeper is how the different topics are connected at the core.

A young scientist comes to the area researching river dolphins and gets caught up in a love triangle with the proud, educated, male visitor, and the 'wild' and simple, native, fisher. Through a notebook of the educated man's uncle we live through the story of not one but two generations on a similar theme in the area.
While the politics of the area are discussed, the nature is ever-imposing, eventually cataclysmically so, and the hearts of people never stop beating. The love story is very real, not romantic in any way. The end is quite gripping, and the story lingers. A great read.

Beautiful, evocative, thoughtful, but weak characterisation
I enjoyed reading this book for its setting most of all. The boat journeys through the Sunderbans area of Bengal were very evocative and a joy to read. It's a pity Ghosh could not work the same magic in devising his characters. Like other readers I was not convinced by the attraction between Piya and Fokir, and did not really understand the relationship between Kanai and Piya. It was almost as if the Sundarbans was the main character and the characters Piya, Fokir and Kanai were the backdrop.
I was intrigued enough to keep going with the subplot of the uprising but felt it was an anticlimax when Kanai came to the end of his uncles book detailing the uprising involving Fokir's mother but without actually telling us what happened to her. And anyway I did not care enough about Kanai to relate the uprising to him. The book is well researched and well written, with interesting insights and beautiful descriptions, however without well-drawn characters it feels like a beautifully written essay rather than a novel. Still, one can enjoy an essay, too, so a well-deserved four stars for this one. As a lover of books about India, I find that Ghosh is a strong writer and I intend to read more of his work. I have just bought the highly acclaimed `Glass Palace'

Somewhat frustrating.
Hmmm... maybe it's just me, but I have to admit I found it quite a slow and frustrating read. Sure, the setting is beautiful and the images of the tide country, its inhabitants and wildlife spring instantly to life, but I found the book stumbled when it came to the characters and storyline.

For starters, althought we are introduced to Kanai and Piya as what seem to be the main characters, the writer continues to introduce new ones, making it confusing who exactly the story is about. Perhaps it is a bout all of them but there is not much space in it for all to develop, making their actions somewhat unrealistic - how can Piya be in love with Fokir after spending just a day with him? And is Kanai following his usual predatory instincts in pursuing her, or is there a geniune interest? And what are Fokir's feelings exactly? He is played out as a very important link between several characters, but hardly speaks and gives us no justification for any of his actions or an insight to his emotions.

The story itself is also made up by a jumble of each person's separate stories, including Kanai's dead uncle's. The majority of the book alternates between the past and the present, making reading feel jarred and hard to follow.

The book indeed is a wonderful collection of stories, but I felt the links between those and the characters were too tenuous and superficial, which led to quite a frustrating read.

Sorry.