Amitav Ghosh
River of Smoke is the second in a proposed trilogy, Amitav Ghosh's compelling follow-up to Sea of Poppies, which was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. At 522 pages, River of Smoke is clearly a Big Book.
In a recent New York Times piece, Dwight Garner wondered whether some overweight American novels might need liposuction: Why so large, he asks.
This lush tome might well raise the same question, but I'd argue that this art is worth the time and caloric intake. River of Smoke sprawls, spins story after story, and character after character: addicts, admirals, sailors, painters, botanists, murderers, fakirs, fathers and bastard sons, as well as much wonky dialect and rhythmic pidgin ("Allow no have send sing-song girlie").
This is not a slim volume about hipsters marooned in a coffee shop, no sir. Tom Wolfe would approve of this heft and span and girth. Reading its pages, I felt immersed in giant worlds, on endless seas in furious storms, I had to get up occasionally and walk around, look out the window to see what century I was in.
The novel's main thread follows the opium trade leading up to Opium Wars of the mid-19th century, a different incarnation of today's War on Drugs and mirroring more recent infatuations with opiates, legal or otherwise. Then, as now, huge amounts of revenue are at stake in the drug trade.
Our central character, Bahram, is a Bombay merchant with manners and ability and a shipload of opium he wants to sell in Canton before Chinese authorities slam shut the door and burn their boats ("Viceroys and Governors of every Province have been authorized to conduct raids and make seizures of Opium"), or before French or British gunboats reduce Canton to cinders.
And here lies a weird irony: Opium dens are stereotypically associated with Asian alleys and wispy mandarins thin as razors, but this novel witnesses a fleet of European ships force-feeding China's addicts while China's rulers try to oppose and eradicate the vice ("opium is a poisonous drug brought from foreign countries"). This is globalization, 19th-century style, free trade as rough trade.
In a beautifully rendered passage, Bahram the merchant smokes a bowl (also see the exquisite opium scenes in Graham Greene's The Quiet American) and seduces or is seduced by a mysterious woman. It seems "no longer possible to say no," he says in an echo of our more contemporary mantra, Just Say No.
I thought of David Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross, exploring the fine line between commerce and subterfuge ("always be closing"). Merchants crave the market, the deal, much like now, and can't resist the huge profits a drug cargo can deliver. Profit is a drug. There is also much profit in tea, spice, in China's mysterious floral blooms and the botanist's grail, a plant rumoured to reverse aging. England must fill its gardens with hydrangeas and its treasury with gold. But Ghosh is not didactic; he is subtle and sympathetic, he understands these cravings.
At times, River of Smoke nakedly displays the author's hours of research and midnight oil. A long letter to a woman describes Canton's great citadel walls, the Sea-Calming Tower and sampans floating below, "four to five yards in length, roofs made of bamboo, and their design is at once very simple and marvellously ingenious, for they can be moved to suit the weather. When it rains the coverings are rearranged to protect the whole boat, and on fine days they are rolled back to expose the living quarters to the sun." Information seems planted at times (this detail has to fit somewhere), but still, the scenes are marvellous.
Like much of history, River of Smoke is fascinating, and the novel documents a distasteful episode and era, also like much of history, like any time: smuggling, addiction, exploitation, gunboat diplomacy, trade barriers and penetration and intercourse, cannons and cottage industries and huge economic engines.
The world described is gone and this is an old story, but a timely one, considering China's muscular new financial and mercantile presence on the global stage. In one chapter, Bahram manages to visit Napoleon, imprisoned by the British on St. Helena, and Napoleon, "the Creature who agitated the world," states presciently, "Better that China remains asleep, for the world is sure to tremble when she awakes."
Mark Anthony Jarman teaches at the University of New Brunswick and is the author of 19 Knives and My White Planet.