Ghosh World

Though trained as an anthropologist at Oxford, Amitav Ghosh now scrutinizes mankind through his fiction. His new novel, River of Smoke, follows 2008’s Sea of Poppies as the second volume in his Ibis trilogy, which covers the Opium Wars; in researching it, Ghosh stumbled upon the forgotten history of his native India’s role in the sale of opium to China.

Did you always plan to tell the story of the Opium Wars through people who don’t show up in history as major actors–factory workers, migrant laborers?

Opium is an aspect of our past that we simply do not know about. We don’t address it, yet it’s been formative of the Indian economy to this day. But what I was really interested in was the story of these people leaving India. The indentured diaspora has created really great writers such as V.S. Naipaul and Sam Selvon. And for working-class people who were leaving in large numbers during the 19th century, it was a powerful thing to be torn away from your caste, community, village. Essentially, you become an outcaste.

But do you think Indians today look at their history as one that includes sugar plantations?

No, and it’s a cruel and ugly thing. It’s partly denial and partly a veiled contempt–the idea that these were the flotsam and jetsam of our society and that’s why they left.

When you started out, there were clear boundaries between Indian, English and American literature. Now there are many younger authors who are writing globalist novels.

My writing from the start was rooted in my own experiences, which were ones of travel and dispersal. For the first 15 to 20 years it was met with incomprehension, but now it’s commonplace. The world caught up with us.