Down river of words with Amitav Ghosh

CHENNAI: He’s been making stops in all the major cities, promoting his new book, ‘River of Smoke’, and on Thursday author Amitav Ghosh launched his book in Chennai, meeting fans and autographing copies.
“It can be tiring to tour so much but it’s always good to meet readers. After I wind up here, I get a little time off and then there are tours in Europe and the US.I always tour about six to seven months with a book,” says Ghosh.
‘River of Smoke’, the second in his Ibis Trilogy, is set largely in Canton (present-day Guangzhou) in China and traces the events leading up to the Opium Wars of the mid-19th century.
“A few months into writing ‘Sea of Poppies’ (the first book in the trilogy), I knew the characters were so interesting that I would need more than one book to tell their stories,” says Ghosh, adding that he may not really stop with three books.
“But all the books will be independent — you can read ‘River of Smoke’ without knowing about ‘Sea of Poppies’ and that will be true of the third book as well,” he says.
There is a Chennai connection to the novel, though it is not mentioned in the book. “British painter George Chinnery, who is mentioned in the book, began his career in Madras around 1795.
He was a gifted though eccentric man. His family had business connections with Madras and he spent 10 years painting here before moving to Calcutta and then to Macau. None of his work from the Madras period survives, but his landscapes from Calcutta and Dhaka are truly beautiful,” says Ghosh.
‘River of Smoke’ combines a variety of subjects, from the opium trade and sea-faring to botany and art.
“A novel allows you to bring everything to one unified space. I’m interested in botany, history, geology, all kinds of subjects. Orhan Pamuk spoke of the encyclopaedic novel, I think that really describes my way of looking at the novel,” says Ghosh.
He also headed to a number of museums in China and did extensive research for his books, spending a month in Guangzhou.
“Thirteen Hong Street, which was the most vibrant part of the Foreign Enclave, still survives exactly as it did back in the 1800s. It is the busiest street I have ever seen. It makes Kolkata’s Bowbazaar seem empty,” he says.