The Hungry Tide [ペーパーバック]

I had never heard of the Sundarbens prior to reading this book. I will never forget them after reading it. I could not put this book down, and it is on my list of best books for the past year. The characters come from different places, yet come together through fate and circumstances. Ghosh gives us love stories interwoven throughout, and actually until the end we are not sure how these will play out. He writes great adventure and nature scenes, and introduces natural elements that most will not be familiar with. He will make you think about the environment and its inhabitants in several different ways (spoiler-tigers and residents, dolphins and residents-compare and contrast). It will make you think of your own hospitality. It has spirituality and myth interwoven throughout as well as their expression in poetry. Yet somehow all these different elements come together in the geographic setting of the story. The storm scenes will remain etched on my mind for years to come (compare it to the storm in The Perfect Storm). This book will make you look at what is most important posession wise in times of crisis and during regular times. His characters are well developed and defined, and I could picture each and everyone in my mind's eye. They are unforgettable. I cannot recommend this book enough, but at the same time I don't want to provide any spoilers. Brilliant writing. Confirms my own belief that India will be my next big trip. Take a chance on a book that is very different and just read it, you will be hungry for more!

"The Hungry Tide" is the first novel by Amitav Ghosh I read. I am very interested in India and read a lot of Indian authors, but somehow Ghosh had escaped my attention. Till now - because now I will definitely read his other books.

I was drawn to "The Hungry Tide" by its setting - the action takes place in the Sundarbans, the archipelago in the Bengal Bay, at the mouth of the Ganges, partially belonging to India and partially to Bangladesh, where the fresh river water mixes with the saltwater from the ocean. The tides make the Sundarbans a difficult place to live for humans, but, at the same time, a unique habitat for fauna and flora. The mangrove swamps are dominant, and they provide the shelter for many species of animals, which are specific to the region or very rare in other areas. The example is the Royal Bengal Tiger, a man-eater, featuring in "The Hungry Tide" together with several species of dolphins and deadly crocodiles.

The novel starts with the meeting of two main characters, Piyali (Piya), an Indian-American field biologist specialized in dolphins, and Kanai, a sophisticated interpreter and businessman, on the train to Canning. Piya has a plan to collect data on the life of the rare river dolphins, which are the subject of her research. Kanai was summoned by his aunt, Nilima, to the island of Lusibari (he spent there only one summer as a schoolboy), where she runs a charity, to get the package left to him in the will of his late uncle, Nirmal, a leftist schoolteacher with literary ambitions. Kanai is interested in Piya, and when they part in Canning, he invites her to Lusibari.

From this point, the narration is separated into alternating chapters devoted to the doings of Piya and Kanai. Piya gets her travel permit and goes by motorboat to see the dolphins with the national forest guard and a thug of a boat owner. The accident, in which she nearly drowns, leaves her on the small fishing rowboat belonging to Fokir, a poor fisherman from Lusibari. Since then, Piya's fate is connected with Fokir's. After seeing some dolphins, they go to Lusibari and organize a bigger expedition, in which Kanai participates as a translator. The tension between the three becomes difficult to bear...

The novel is full of extraordinary, powerful characters. Each protagonist has very distinct characteristics and all of them stand out of the crowd. They are all strongly tied to the Sundarbans, but each of them understands the life in the islands differently: Fokir is rooted in the old traditions; his wife, Moyna, who trains to be a nurse, wants to have a better life and help the local people; Nilima runs a charity - a hospital, a guest house and educational services; Piya and Kanai become infected with the Sundarbans and want to go back...

I liked the construction of the novel, which, in addition to alternating chapters about Piya and Kanai, which finally merge, has many other threads, most important of which is Nirmal's notebook, which Kanai is reading, and which reports the events leading to Nirmal's death. These events are, of course, the happenings essential in the newest history of the Sundarbans. Nirmal, who is an admirer of Rilke, quotes Rilke's poems all the time (sometimes, to me , a little too freely, and I cannot see the connection between his thoughts and Rilke's lines, but - licentia poetica...).

There is also an evocation of the local myth of the goddess Bon Bibi, which is beautifully woven into the story.

I could compare "The Hungry Tide" to James Michener's novels, it is in the same way well researched (Ghosh is an anthropologist so his interest and knowledge of the natural sciences are profound) and concentrates on the specific region. Unlike Michener though, Ghosh tells one actual story and his book is a real novel, not an attempt to span the centuries of history, so it is way less superficial and concentrated on the characters.

Amitav Ghosh is a master of the genre "Fictionalized Thesis". Before this one he excelled in ' In An Antique Land' in mixing fiction with facts gathered through painstaking research and the synergy turns out to be extraordinarily capable of conveying the message creating the desired effect. Though he extensively deals with science, Ghosh has appeared to nurture mystic elements within his basic views of the world, history. He seems to believe in destiny and recognizes omen as would be evident through his 'Calcutta Chromosome' also. His perception of history has its full quota of heroes. As he lamented in 'Dancing in Cambodia At Large in Burma' that the postmodern world has taken away from the middle class its heroes, here (in Hungry Tides) he is very firm in acknowledging them in his definition of things. And, as always, with a quotation of Rilke here and a passionate interpretation of his own there, he enthralls the poetically oriented one to one's heart's content.

Sundarbans, a vast forest that insulates the inland of lower Bengal in India from the ocean, is slowly being denuded of its bio-diversity; the ecological balance is seriously being threatened. And all these are because the life of the ordinary, extremely poor people living there do not count for anything to the political establishments. As the scientist Mr. Piddington warned, if the forest is itself endangered that is certainly to diminish the possibility of Calcutta being protected any more against the devastating oceanic storms of Bay of Bengal. Interestingly that threat of a sad destiny where the guilty will not be spared destruction is hinted at very clearly through a metaphorical local tale of Bon-bibi and Dakshin Rai among the dwellers of Sundarbans. The educated city people, the enlightened, unfortunately live in a translated world of their own and they failed to interpret the meaning of science, progress, civilization to the under-privileged, neither have the plight of these hapless people been earnestly conveyed to the outer world which could extend an effective helping hand. Ghosh attempts to bring back the memories of S'Daniel Hamilton to stress upon the importance of true enlightenment and indomitable human spirit keeping aside unnecessary categorizations of revolutionary, bourgeois, secular, pagan and so on. The author exhibits a rare sincerity in describing the life of the underprivileged but struggling people of Sundarbans with true respect. A hint of a development of romance between an illiterate boatman Fakir and the US born cetologist Piyali Roy who studies marine mammals, has been a remarkable technique to steer the narrative with cohesion.

And about the dolphins - appreciation of the book and its subsequent popularity will create innumerable experts and well-wishers all over the world -no doubt about that!