The Circle of Reason

by Amitav Ghosh

A novel which traces the adventures of a young weaver called Alu, a child of extraordinary talent, from his home in an Indian village through the slums of Calcutta, to Goa and across the sea to Africa. By the author of THE SHADOW LINES.

Genres: Fiction, India, Indian Literature, Historical Fiction, Literature, Literary Fiction, Novels

457 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Amitav Ghosh is an Indian writer. He won the 54th Jnanpith award in 2018, India's highest literary honour. Ghosh's ambitious novels use complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal identity, particularly of the people of India and South Asia. He has written historical fiction and non-fiction works discussing topics such as colonialism and climate change.
Ghosh studied at The Doon School, Dehradun, and earned a doctorate in social anthropology at the University of Oxford. He worked at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi and several academic institutions. His first novel, The Circle of Reason, was published in 1986, which he followed with later fictional works, including The Shadow Lines and The Glass Palace. Between 2004 and 2015, he worked on the Ibis trilogy, which revolves around the build-up and implications of the First Opium War. His non-fiction work includes In an Antique Land (1992) and The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016).
Ghosh holds two Lifetime Achievement awards and four honorary doctorates. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India's highest honours, by the President of India. In 2010, he was a joint winner, along with Margaret Atwood, of a Dan David prize, and in 2011, he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis festival in Montreal. He was the first English-language writer to receive the award. In 2019, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade.

Reviews

[Tracy]

OMG. I couldn't finish it. Horror of all horrors, I couldn't finish a book by an author that I admire. But I realized what it is. I was struggling with the same thing in 'The Hungry Tide'. Ghosh spends an inordinate amount of time developing characters, their pasts, their little histories, their unique experiences. The plot gets put on hold as we dive (once again) into the history of a newly introduced character and then the anecdote takes you further and further away from the current storyline and 20 pages later you are slowly dragged back to the present.

Now I love good character development. I really do. But this? THIS? It's maddening. Really? Nearly every character gets this? It's too much (for me).

Here is the worst part and what made me throw this book across the room. A third way into the book, Ghosh 'removes' a large group of the main characters! GONE. People who I had just been forced to examine the way they like to pluck their nosehairs. Gone from the story. WTF?

I threw the book down. I'm not going to finish it. Nothing had happened anyway. There was barely anyone left to care about.

SO! My friends, if you love love love characters (Liz?) and don't care too much about a cohesive plot, this book might suit you.

I must also add, I loved his recent book 'The Sea of Poppies', and it's the first in a trilogy that I will certainly attempt to read when it comes out. 'Sea of Poppies' had great characters and a interesting plot.

[notgettingenough · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't have the issue that bother some with this book, the way characters disappear. But I've been to see Ryan Gosling in The Place Beyond the Pines and it turned out I could pack up and go home about 20 minutes in. One of those life experiences that hardens you.

A young policeman, whose preference is painting birds, and who is in the police because it was the first civil service position for which he qualified, keeps changing the lives of odd but good people without having any interest in doing so. I want to call him corrupt in that he has a job he doesn't care about and he treats it in a way you can't treat that sort of job. He should care. But in fact he does what he is told, toes the line, hopes to get up the ranks, hopes mainly that he can spend as much time as possible with birds. And so. First he is responsible for the incineration of a group of crazy good people. One escapes and in chasing him down, he is responsible for a brutal police attack on another equally odd group which is doing nothing more than going shopping.

rest is here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre...

[Magdelanye · Rating 5 out of 5]

If we wait for everything to be right,again,we'll wait for ever while the world falls apart.The only hope is to make do with what we've got. p450


For the extremely challenged characters in this magnificent sweeping epic,the above quote is the theme song of their lives. AG gives us a work that is not only technically amazing,following the form of an Indian raga,but also outstanding in the finely nuanced depth of his characters in his frank but compassionate presentation.

In the end,although we may be dazzled by the writing and the staggering subtle connections that may never be fully revealed,we know little more about the hero than we did at the beginning.But what a survivor! And along the way,a random duration of time really,we become well acquainted with all the lives that overshadow or influence the way the events unfold for him as his journey takes him full circle.With only a hazy idea of the future,there is still abundant faith and hope.We can only cheer him on,as with the last two of his companions,he prepares to begin yet again.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Circle of Reason is the first novel by Indian author, Amitav Ghosh. The story of Nachiketa Bose, known throughout the narration as Alu because of his misshapen head, is related from his arrival at his uncle Balaram’s house in the Bengali town of Lalpukur, when he is orphaned at eight years old. A boy who becomes gifted at languages and a skilful weaver, a cascade of events leads to Alu’s flight across India, into the Middle East and across northern Africa, pursued by a tenacious policeman, Jyoti Das, under the pretext that he is a suspect in a terrorist incident. Ghosh gives the reader a rich cast of characters that are appealing and complex; even minor characters are allotted a potted history in their turn. The plot has quite a few twists, and Ghosh manages to fairly seamlessly include a village squabble, weaving, phrenology and physiognomy, a man obsessed with carbolic acid, the life of Louis Pasteur, a theory on queues, a comparison between communism and capitalism, a self-immolation, an attack with boiling oil, a building collapse, the Hindu epic Mahabharata and sewing machines. An amazing debut novel.

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strange novel. The narrative is clean & taut. The characters are real, and there is abcolutely nothing fictitious about any of them (I have encountered people like them). The landscape against which these characters & events enact their unique drama of life, love, death, misery, hope and frustration is vast and yet real. There is a connectivity between every two event, and the whole thing indeed makes up a circle, but.... This is pretty unnerving, but the fact is that the only impression that remains in your mind after you have read this very-very well written (and substantially compelling)novel is: "but...., how....., why....., you mean....., so....., then what.....). And that's what it's all about! Now make up your mind as to whether "to read, or not to read"!

[Rachael Murphy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It has taken me forever to read this book and I struggled to finish it. I truly hate to say it because I love Amitav Ghosh and everything else I have read but I didn't enjoy this. Like his other novels the scenes are perfectly set but the chacaters though well rounded had no background and you were only getting to know them when there storyline ends and you move on to a whole new set of people and another unrelated story. There were certainly elements that were taken the whole way through by way of continuity but they were a cameosa to the theme.

[Sujani Koya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amitav Ghosh's first ever novel and his masterly grip on story-telling shows. The story is happenstance here mostly for me. The characters are so wonderfully sketched and with as much varied eccentricities as seen in real life. So we go through some cities and countries with an increasingly quickening pace of narration. We meet a host of memorable characters and get attached to so many of them! Loving Ghosh

[Murali Neelakantan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I had read this book before I read all the others by Amitav Ghosh. It has all the characteristics one has come to expect of an Amitacv Ghosh novel - deep research, great narration with such level of detail that it feels like an impressionist painting, a significant item or thought, The Life of Louis Pasteur in this case, that binds all the main characters who travel through time on their own paths which Ghosh conspires to ensure cross during some time in the story and connections to Bengal and the positive impact that it has had thanks to the prosperity of Burma. I now see where all this began and can only marvel at how he has successfully developed each of these themes in his subsequent works. There is mention of Ronald Ross and his association with Calcutta which is the central theme of The Calcutta Chromosome. The reference to Balaram Bose's father who made his fortune thanks to his connections with the timber trade in Burma is the central theme of The Glass Palace, one of my favourite novels and the description of Naokhali and the immigrants from Burma who consciously keep their own quaint traditions and language all seem like preliminary research for his subsequent works. Like all his other works, this one too shows off his immense ability to research arcane topics and find relevance for them in the novel's characters. The history of cotton and weaving becomes central to Shombhu Debnath and phrenology to Balaram Bose. I can see why my friend, Srikanth Mallavarapu who teaches English in Roanoke, Virginia is so interested in Amitav Ghosh's works. As with all his other works, what stands out is his ability to describe, in great detail the characters and the setting, almost like a screenplay. The attention to detail never ceases to amaze. Even simple descriptions of Balaram Bose's house and how it looks with the light filtering through coconut palms and lemon trees is so vivid that even someone like me with no creative genes can visualise it. It may seem, to many readers, to be quite superfluous since it does not add much to the plot or the story line but perhaps that is the beauty of a classical style of writing that many of us grew up reading. Those of us who have been lucky to live amongst coconut palms and lemon trees will immediately recall the effect that these trees, which are so different from each other, work nicely together so that the tall palms and the short lemon tree take the edge of the harsh sun and torrential rain. If one was to look for meaning the trees could be symbolising Bhudeb Roy and Balaram Bose or perhaps it is just a red herring for the readers planted there by Ghosh in a moment of mischief. The influence of his time in Egypt is evident here with colloqual Arabic phrases thrown in when Zindi and her friends exclaim. Unlike many other authors, these phrases seem be in the right place and keep with the flow of the story. This is perhaps taken too far in The Sea of Poppies where the use of Anglo-Indian phrases is overdone. I cannot but agree with Srikanth's characterization of Ghosh as an ambitious author who surrounds himself with his brilliant ideas and characters but fails to pick on one central theme or set of characters to develop. Everytime one reads one of his novels, one feels like one is reading the Mahabharatha with several characters, each playing the central character in a sub-plot somewhere while the main characters disappear for a while to the background. There is a set of themes and ideas in this work that develop into central themes in subsequent novels. If I ever met Amitav Ghosh, I would suggest that he reads The Malgudi Days a few times a year. R.K. Narayan created a number of characters and each of them had a central role in a story that had a single plot that ensured that it was easy reading while at the same time allowed for each of those stories and characters to be developed over time beyond Malgudi. While it begins in a manner that shows off all of Ghosh's strengths, it also highlights what I think is one of his weaknesses, the ability to finish the novel in the same enthusiastic way that he begins like setting off on a great adventure only to stop when the car runs out of fuel in the middle of nowhere. To a simpleton like me, it is a very tame ending that Alu returns to India with Zindi and Boss, Karthamma dies of a heart attack and Jyoti Das deserts the civil service to work with his uncle in Germany. Maybe the ending was an offering from Ghosh to the critics for them to admire and analyse, find meaning and feel good about the emperor's new clothes. I do like dessert and I feel as if I have been cheated out of it after being served a delicious meal, Ghosh's herbal tea just does not cut it for me. The gratitutous sex between Parboti and Shombhu, the unlikeliest of individuals, is another completely avoidable feature of his novels like the sorbet between courses in a pretentious restaurant.

[Martha · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think one star is too much for this book. I did not find the point. All the characters are mentally ill, even though the author tries to pass them as normal. I was hoping to at least learn something from the setting and situations. But the characters are so outrageously crazy that I cannot trust any of the situations or the background setting. Don't waste your time.

[Liza Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried and tried....in the end I am tired of reading this book.this is the lousiest book I have ever read in my life.couldnt believe such a pointless novel.i was attracted to the book because of the caption'the circle of reason'.but couldn't find any reason to read further.every chapter has a new character n the description of past of each character is diverting the actual circle of reason.

[Priya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ghosh, as always, delivers a solid cast of absolutely intriguing characters, some so full of whimsy that at one point I got a faint sense of Carroll's Alice in Wonderland; the characters become so well developed and become close acquaintances that it is with some wistfulness that I bid them adieu. The story as ever is beautifully scripted and so well drawn out in intricacy and quality.

[Rochelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved In an Antique Land, so I had very high expectations for this novel. I found it enjoyable but not nearly as excellent as I expected.

[Sarita · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book and some parts were exceptional…but I didn't have the patience and fortitude for the meandering storyline…so many characters and so little interest...

[Jamie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Circle of Reason is divided into three parts, and each section on its own presents a compelling story with a sympathetic protagonist at the center. The problem with the novel as a whole is that the protagonist changes in every section, and the thread that weaves them together is constantly weakened. The only character who carries through the whole book is Alu, a lumpy-headed orphaned boy who grows into a man. Unfortunately he spends much of the narrative as a silent bystander. And other characters who are more fully developed drop out of the story as one section transitions to the other.

At the center of the story thematically is The Life of Pasteur - a book that changes hands numerous times, inspiring carbolic acid washes of entire village streets and a neighborhood that operates without the use of money. These interpretations of Pasteur’s ideas are comically extreme, bordering on tangential. In bringing forth these images, Ghosh uses beautiful language with just enough humor. But the details are overwhelming, backstories seem to nest within one another like a narrative matryoshka, and it’s never quite clear how all of these details are relevant to the story, not to mention the difficulty in keeping track of them all. The take-away: Pasteur was an economist.

“Because for all his genius Pasteur had never asked himself the real question: where is the germ’s battleground? What is it that travels from man to man carrying contagion and filth, sucking people out and destroying them even in the safety of their own houses, even when every door and window is shut? […] Money. The answer is money.”

[Lester · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was Amitav Ghosh's first novel, and in this I saw the start of the style which led to the complex intertwining of characters and tales in his more recent books. The story is of a simple boy, Alu, who through circumstance more than anything else comes to be a weaver, then a branded terrorist, a fugitive, a construction labourer and a messiah. The story itself is fairly riveting, as the reader always wants to know what will happen next. Alu and his companions are constantly being pulled into situations from which they need to escape, and this keeps the pace of the book fast.

The interesting structure of the book further dictates the pace, where the first half of 9 chapters spans decades in India, the next 9 chapter a couple of months in the Middle East, and the last two chapters span the books climax within a day in northern Africa.

Ghosh's style is exquisite, especially his language. I did get a bit ticked off by a couple of longer deviations into a side character, but these soon gave way to the main story. Warning: there is a lot of sadness and pain in this book - it develops themes of the sorry lot of the weaver and servant classes in India, conditions of the labour classes in the middle east, and the sorry lot of police departmental and personal politics

[Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I took a class with Amitav, but I had never read any of his work up to this point. The novel was both surprising and unsurprising. There were things that I expected from him based on his teaching style and the books that he chose for us to read and some of those expectations were met. His attention to detail was immaculate, though occasionally distracting. On the other hand, my favorite part of the book was a section that recounted the dealings of small character in a short story format. It fit perfectly into the context of the novel and served as a microcosm of the rest of the work. Unfortunately, it never seemed like the story had much focus. Even now I'm not entirely sure where it went.

[Aarthi · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the first time I ve been disappointed with Amitav Ghosh's novel.I could not connect to even a single character in this book. I could not even sympathesize or empathesize with them. The only reason I did not shelve the book was that I was expecting some redeeming miracle to arise out of the plot as the pages were flipped.But alas there was none! The plot itself was leading to nowhere.His detailed characterizations are usually a delight to read but this time it was plain boring and pointless as half of them disappear in the first half itself. I'm feeling let down by an author whom I consider a genius!

[Molshri · Rating 3 out of 5]

The strange motley of characters made this a very interesting read. Moreover, I love Amitav Ghosh's style of writing and his great command over the English language. Alu and all the other people around him are so weird and all his adventures are very strange indeed.
This book has poor reviews but if you have liked his other novels and his descriptive style - you will like this book.
Amitav Ghosh takes you through an unusual journey through different but hostile parts of the world and each part is quirky with a strange but amusing twist in the story.
I took away a star cause the book dragged a bit towards the end. Still worth reading it though.

[Nicole Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amitav Ghosh is a rare breed: he writes history and fiction equally well. In this novel he creates an entire world--a small village in turn-of-the-century India, a local would-be scientist who is in love with phrenology and goes around measuring all the villagers' heads, and a small boy around whom an at turns tragic, hilarious, and profoundly philosophic story turns. I gave it 4 stars because the ending felt a bit stilted to me, but it was still a great read!

[Lakshmi · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was interesting upto a point but then I felt it dragged a bit too long. True to Amitav's style, his characters are well etched, although he has tended to stretch the uni-dimension that he fixates on a little more this time. Clearly an earlier work, you can see his profression from here through to his IBIS trilogy.
Not a terrible book to read but not one that you will miss terribly if you dont come to it.

[Abhisikta Das · Rating 5 out of 5]

No idea how this novel managed to get 3.4 stars. Agreed that it's an unconventional novel, not one of those feel good types which you can just finish off in a day or two. Each sentence will make you think, they will make you adore his writing style as well as his execution style. It gave me a breath of fresh air from all the conventional novels I have read in recent times.

[April · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a very confusing book. Maybe it was due to listening to the audiobook instead of reading it that I struggled to follow the plot. Yet, other reviews suggest my experience was the trend. I wanted to like it, and some parts were intriguing, but memorable? Not so much. Honestly, I’d have to read a summary to truly know what I read. I guess we can’t love them all.

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

An early work of the writer, this has a flavour of the literature of Bengal where the author originates from, with the first part reminiscent of the works of many great authors of the land in its style, language and even in the humour, the imagery and the motivation of the characters, the conflicts. Tarashankar Bandopadhyaya, Bimal Mitra, one is reminded of a whole sea of literature behind this that is the heritage of a rich culture, as one reads the first part. The second part is reminiscent of One Hundred Years Of Solitude in its silent ominous extinction of the people and the nameless, faceless Oilmen and the power that employes them, with a little flavour also of Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

Named Circle of Reason, it is no circle of any kind at all, even in the broadest sense possible, but really a curve fitted to three hillocks of events across planes and valleys of thought and people and cultures across two huge continents, events that illustrate the philosophy and concepts for the writer. The journey depicted is hardly a circle, it is not even closed at any level be it conceptual or geographical - he travels from Reason to Passion to Death while moving from rural and capital scenario of Bengal to northern shores of Indian Ocean at Al Ghezhira to coasts of Africa, ending across from Gibraltar after the last episode at an Algiers small town.

The first part goes on about phrenology, and one is puzzled - isn't that the theory that was turned into a basis of a huge genocide less than a century ago? Then as it goes on one cannot help but begin to chuckle inward, and much of the first part stays at that level of beginning to perceive the characters and the philosophies and motives while the chuckling continues sporadically, never rising to a laughter but always bringing comfort. One begins to understand that it had to be phrenology, since Bose is a follower of Reason and fan of Pasteur and hence could hardly go with a normal human face reading that most people do subconsciously, much less the more evolved palmistry or astrology that the education he had made him deprecating or downright denouncing of, and phrenology provides a semblance of reason being pseudo scientific. It does not stop one chuckling, though.

As usual the author provides a great deal of information across time and borders of geography, with the not so widely known connection between today's computers and the evolution thereof, and the connection with ancient weavers of India and their craft, expertise, art of creation of finest weaves, cotton and silk both. It is a wonder, the connection of reason with creation of art, art that is not merely bought for ridiculously high price to hang or lie about the house just to score against someone or show off but is a direct use and pleasure and wonder for millions for millennia.

The connection has always been there, of course, or there would be no progress or evolution of human history in either field, physical need being supreme and reason merely a nuisance taking time away from needs for useless philosophising - but now the connection is often unperceived and an artificial division of the two is seen wherein often people feel justified in claiming their education was of no use whatsoever, that is, unless they are in medical or legal fields professionally in US, making money far more than minting would enable them. (In other countries and cultures of course no such disconnection or uselessness is claimed as far as education goes, and one wonders if it is merely a case of ingratitude for the free education with opportunity for all that brings such attitudes into fashion.)

But progress is never unopposed and nor is reason or higher faculties of humanity, and here too there is the landlord (literally that is the meaning of his name as well, in another bit of humour) who is more about political power and cares for progress or education only in so much as it serves his purpose. In a conflict reason literally explodes killing all but the young new expert of weaving forced to flee across the land and ocean to another country in search of a safe life.

This, the Lalpukur revolution that is basically benefic, yet ending up in tragedy, is perhaps an eternal tale where good motives do not succeed without power behind them - and when power comes in there has to be care about its taking over and burying reason and truth trampled underfoot, which can happen with power on reason's side just as well as opposite.

The second part, passion, takes one to Al Ghazeira, somewhere on the north shore of what is named Arabian Sea but really is one of the two northern ends of Indian Ocean - the other being just as named Bay of Bengal but the two really being similar in size and practically mirror images for all that.

Here one sees humanity from many parts of world arriving in search of a livelihood, living together and adjusting to the land and one another, in harmony until the nameless and ominous Oilmen finally are successful in taking over - not without a gunning down and wiping out of a whole populace wrongly - perhaps deliberately - labeled suitably for the purpose as troublemakers, revolutionaries, whatever.

In reality there was a small, peaceful revolution, tremendous in impact on thought and behaviour but with no violence, on the contrary, in the making before the ambush and the wipeout. The weaver had thought during being trapped under a huge collapsed building, and come out and begun to speak what he thought; and as strange as it seems to the reader if not understood those listening to him did understand perfectly, and begun to organise around his words, his now nonstop weaving. (There is a bit of allegory here, with Gandhi's spinning of a century ago made a crucial factor of his entirely too real revolution in defeating a wealthy and powerful empire into walking out albeit after much loot over the centuries they ruled, which stays unaccounted for including the jewels exhibited in the tower of London.) The people thus able to see his point organise their society with balanced and perfectly accounted books replacing money transactions within the neighbourhood, much like a bank and co-operative organising the social structure akin to a family's, with the effect that the people's energies are freed to achieve more and the money is saved for everyone to be able to do more.

And all this flowering of a neighbourhood to a better life is destroyed while still in the bud by a misguided attempt of an erstwhile information trader who is as overwhelmed by the happening as others, only unable to give up his older trade and ideas, and thus is not only caught and brought to death (with his own employee profiting by informing on him and inheriting his whole property after his death against his will, too) but jeopardises the whole movement, every innocent one out for an outing for shopping, and much killing in the process. The weaver is saved ironically by the mother figure who has not been enamoured of his talk, of the money-and-germs connection, into giving up her savings for accounting into a book - the accounts are entirely honestly and meticulously kept, this is not communism - and uses them to hire space on a boat to take them away to safety.

The third named death is in Algeria after a harrowing travel across the Indian Ocean's northern ports along Africa and then into Mediterraenean, with a glowing description of sand dunes of the border of Sahara where the story takes one. Here the confrontation is finally between dry theoretic reason attempting to destroy all heritage of millennia and unscroupulously clawing for power - since reason can always be employed to achieve justification of all if other bases of mind and heart and more are let go or destroyed - on one hand, and a humanitarian ideal tempering and finally rebelling against this dry movement of reason on the other. The humanitarian ideal wins, even in death, and frees the living to proceed to live with hope, looking north to another continent or west to another ocean, or back to home.

One could wish the writer would overcome his temptation for the slightly or more than slightly disgusting details of life's necessities and realities - what sharks are gathering around a small ship for, for instance, so an accidental unfortunate falling out of an unfortunate man results in others helplessly watching him eaten alive even as he pleads for help - but if one reads this writer one comes to expect some such details of one nature or another. In later works the scatological, prevalent here a la British taste in humour, gives way to equally shoddy details of what is supposed to be titillating, and it begins to seem as if it is a concession he makes on demand of the publisher and prodding by his editors just to shut them up, since everyone is afraid lack of such concessions might result in lesser profits.

It is interesting in the final part to have a merest whiff of history of Algeria, whetting one's curiosity and appetite for more, and to see one beleaguered ex-colonial now free culture make concessions to another, in humanitarian terms.

[LJ Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have enjoyed many novels by Amitav Ghosh over many years but found the structure of this novel ponderous and hard to engage with. The characters were, as always, interesting and vried, but not enough to compensate for the plodding plot.

[Assaf Talgam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a great fan of Amitav Ghosh. This is probably my least favorite book of his, but it was still fun to read.

[Somayan Basu · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was my first encounter with the creations of Amitav Ghosh. I did not relish reading the book, mainly owing to an absence of a decisive storyline and unrequired deviations. However, the author has shown a formidable command over the language, which was evident to me by his numerous embellishments which were struck at the right chords at the appropriate moments to camouflage the certain bluntnesses in the storyline.

The story was all about the scandalous hops of the protagnonist, named Alu from his native village in Bengal to a brief stay in Southern India, where he befriends his accomplices and friends and sails to a bustling port in Middle East, all in order to escape the clutches of a rather perpetually bewildered policeman Jyoti Das, who was set off as a hungry hound by the authorities, all thanks to the false allegations of the scheming Bhudeb Roy. Jyoti Das, with the help of the local authorities manages to either capture or kill most of Alu's accomplices, narrowly missing Alu, who escapes to North Africa with a few of his accomplices.

I wonder how a policeman as naive and weak-willed as Jyoti Das could survive in his uniforms for a single day, which is evident at various junctures of the plot, the highlight being that he decided to participate in a theatre act with this targets and not arresting and deporting them back to India, in spite of knowing them very well. It was expected both of Alu and Jyoti to be scheming and shrewd enough to tackle each other's advances and tricks. But, both the parties turned out to be poorly organised, which led me to often be reminisced by the phrase, 'a comedy of errors'.

The author has profoudly described all the characters, to the extent that the reader can feel himself/herself connect to the characters. But all in all, this book has disappointed me.

[Anita Friesen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a long and unsatisfying slog. It seems as though the author had a number of characters and circumstances - little vignettes - that he didn't know what to do with, so he threw them into a book, then tied them together with a weak story line. The characters were also weak and undeveloped, and there wasn't one I could relate to or even feel for. Descriptions went into unnecessarily minute details. By the end, I didn't care what happened to any of the characters, I skimmed the last 20 pages, and was relieved to close the book. I was especially disappointed because I have really enjoyed listening to Amitav Ghosh in the past when he was interviewed.

[La mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mi sono lasciato cullare da questo romanzone, lungo quasi 500 pagine. Non so se sono riuscito a capire tutto quello che Ghosh voleva raccontare, ma poco importa. Ho goduto delle atmosfere, dei personaggi, della geografia, dei racconti nei racconti, della coralità. Ho viaggiato, dall’India all’Algeria, passando per mari e deserto. Ho imparato che lingua e cultura uniscono e dividono a ogni latitudine, che tante storie che noi crediamo tipiche della nostra cultura occidentale sono il frutto di una storia in cui la separazione tra Oriente e Occidente non era così assoluta come oggi vogliamo credere. Mi sono fatto incantare da storie di donne generose e appassionate, uomini curiosi e ossessionati da un’idea, passioni perdute, fratellanza. Un enorme affresco in movimento, in un epoca imprecisata, fra una tradizione che mostra tutte le sue contraddizioni e un progresso malato, lontano dai bisogni di uomini e donne. Un libro strano, con una storia strana, senza un vero inizio e una vera fine. Probabilmente un libro che non può lasciare indifferenti, o lo si ama – come è successo a me – o lo si rigetta fin dalle prime pagine. In ogni caso, per quanto mi riguarda, l’ennesima conferma per quanto riguarda Ghosh.

[Radhika · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story starts promisingly with an orphaned boy- Alu, who is sent to live with his uncle in a small village with his 'rationalist' uncle who is obsessed with Louis Pasteur, germs and carbolic acid. There are some promising characters like the bird loving police investigator- Jyoti Das, who looks perpetually surprised thanks to his one raised eyebrow. However, the plot has too many characters and their sub plots are too confusing to keep track.As you start relating to the characters, the story shifts from West Bengal to Al-Gazira and you are faced with a whole new set of characters and their histories.
I read this novel after being impressed with Hungry Tide and Sea of Poppies. This story does have the similar theme of conflicts, migration to new unknown lands in a ship etc, but lacks a cohesive plot and I lost interest mid-way.

[Mady · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me about a month to read this book. The positive thing about having taken this long is that the book was a lovely company through this time as I read something everyday. And it was always hard to stop reading it. Amitav Ghosh is becoming one of my favourite storytellers. I love reading books when I have the feeling that the story is so detailed that it must either be truth or meant a loooot of research done by the author.

This book is about so much that it's hard to sinthetize it. For me, it's about Alu and his skill for weaving, about Pasteur and cleanliness, about Zindi and helpfulness... Definitely recommended!