Mapping Spaces: A Study of Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke

Abstract

This paper attempts to study the novel River of Smoke in the Ibis Trilogy written by Amitav Ghosh, one of the most prominent writers in English. The other two novels in the trilogy are Sea of Poppies and Flood of Fire which explore the nineteenth century Opium Wars and address the sociocultural dynamics of the time. This paper attempts to study how Ghosh’s imagination of colonial India functions as a textual or cultural construct of contested spatiality. The author sketches the events that led to the First Opium War (1839-42), sympathises with the destinies of India and China – the nations that were stifled by the forces of capitalism and free trade, and lost their native economies and cultures to the massive British exploitation.