Sea of Poppies

Ibis Trilogy, Book 1

By: Amitav Ghosh

Narrated by: Phil Gigante

Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

At the heart of this vibrant saga is an immense ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean, its purpose to fight China's vicious 19th-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.

In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt Raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship brothers. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will span continents, races, and generations.

The vast sweep of this historical adventure embraces the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the crowded backstreets of Canton. But it is the panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, that makes Sea of Poppies so breathtakingly alive - a masterpiece from one of the world's finest novelists.

©2008 Amitav Ghosh (P)2008 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Such is the power of Ghosh's precise, understated prose that one occasionally wishes to turn the pages three at a time, eager to find out where Ghosh's tale is headed." ( The Boston Globe)
"A writer of supreme skill and intelligence. " ( The Atlantic Monthly)

Seriously, get a native speaker of the language to narrate’

The narrator is terrible— he clearly doesn’t know any of the languages within this book (it’s not all English) and the production company didn’t bother to give him any training. Totally incomprehensible. Horrible pronunciations.

Poor pronunciation

Indic (Hindustanu/Bengali/Bhojpuri) words are poorly pronounced. I wish the narrator had a background in Indian languages.

Appalling Narration

This is a complex, extensively researched and well written novel that is part of a trilogy. It is completely ruined by the narrator who clearly has no knowledge of any language other than English. Whether it is French, Bangla, Bajpori or patois on the high seas, the pronunciation ranges from merely irritating to hysterically funny. It makes the words unintelligible and distracts from the quality of the writing. I strongly recommend getting the book in hard copy.

What started out great,.ended very poorly

This was read beautifully, and the story was fascinating. So much history about the area, and how drugs were used as commerce. But I don't know what happened to the ending. It just left me feeling like there is another book somewhere to explain what happens next. I was so disappointed I felt I just had to write about this. Ending ruined it for me.

great story, narrator so-so

Ghosh does a great job with a really pretty ambitious premise. I wasn't disappointed in the ending--i liked that he didn't feel the need to tidy up all the loose ends. I much preferred the narrator of _The Hungry Tide_--this one didn't actually stumble over all the non-English words, but he still sounded pretty American, and that kept jarring my mental images of the characters.

Great story - Terrible narrator

How could the performance have been better?

I have powered through some really badly narrated books in the past, but this is by far the worst performance. The narrator absolutely butchered the pronounciations of many words, and I was not able to understand the accents of one of the characters.

This book would have been far better served with a narrator of Indian origin as they would have pronounced the words accurately.

Any additional comments?

Overall the story is really good. If you can put up with the mispronouncations of the narrator then do go ahead and purcahse this book.

Brilliant

Wonderful. The story gets to you right from the start. Beautiful language.

Much enjoy audible books but not the accents. They always sound forced in the languages that I speak.

Great novel, but audiobook narration ruined it

"Naach" (dance) is pronounced as naCH ("CH" as in 'chamber' or 'challenge'). Not "nakh". This is just one of many bad pronunciations in this audiobook.

Given the plot is in India and many characters are Indians (even the British characters were mixing up Bengali/Hindi words in their conversations), I wish someone who is familiar with these Indian pronunciations narrated the the story. I couldn't decipher Serang Ali's half-Arakani-half-English dialogs from Phil Gigante's narration. Fortunately I was able to borrow the ebook version from my local library and realized that Serang Ali's dialogs were not as undecipherable as it sounded in this audiobook.
Gigante's over-dramatized narration did not suit well with the tragic and solemn storyline of the novel either. Gigante is a good narrator, but I don't think he was the right choice for the storyline, theme and plot of this novel. It's sloppy job from publisher for not selecting a suitable narrator (which they didn't not correct after many year either).

Eventually I was able to finish this audiobook *using the ebook as companion*. 'Sea of Poppies' is one of the great novels of this era. A well-researched novel depicting the struggle of poor farmers and exploitation of colonial power in India. Amitav Ghosh also narrates the self-righteousness of super-power, something that rhymes with many 20th century events as well. For example, "free-trade" as a pretext of war with China, preaching self-serving (profit, opportunism, exploiting the powerless) actions as acts for greater goods.

Totally Engaging Story

Amitav Ghosh's wonderfully crafted words read by Phil Gigante's rich voice ensnared me in this powerful story of lives coming from distant corners of the world to meet on a ship in the dangerous waters of the Bengal Seas. I can't wait to start the next book in the series to see what transpires in the lives of these amazing people -- notice I did not call them characters.

Outstanding

This book is so colorful and stimulating in its descriptions it may just be one of my favorite books ever. The narrator is smashing. He was so many people with so many voices -- but each distinct. I am the captive of the characters, the story, and the storytelling.