Sea of Poppies

There can be fewer more exciting settings for a novel than a sea-tossed sailing ship. One only has to think of Treasure Island or William Golding's To the Ends of the Earth trilogy to remember that clashing personalities, poor rations and foul weather in a cramped and stinking wooden vessel make for liberal doses of conflict and, very occasionally, amity.

Sea of Poppies is such a concoction, but where Golding elides and Stevenson intrigues, Ghosh piles detail upon detail in a rumbustical adventure that takes in not only the poppy fields of rural India but also the overcrowded ports of Calcutta and Canton and, climactically, life on board the former slaving ship Ibis.

Those brave or stupid enough to board the two-masted schooner at the start of its voyage from Calcutta to Mauritius form a motley crew: an English captain and his sinister first mate; an American second mate; a supercargo who goes by the splendid name of Nob Kissin Pander; a vindictive subedar and his soldiers; swarthy lascar sailors and, in the hold, two prisoners and a group of girmitiyas. Named after the 'girmits' - agreements upon which names (and, in effect, lives) are written in exchange for pieces of silver - most of them have something to hide or run from. As the Ganga flows inexorably to the Bay of Bengal, so the destinies of these characters converge on the Ibis.

It's a combustible combination and Ghosh makes the most of it. From the first page he plunges the reader into the lives of the rich and poor, black and white, high caste and low, natives and colonials. He is damning about the damage wreaked by the British opium trade not only on those addicted to the drug but also on the Indian farmers forced to grow poppies instead of grain.

Above all, though, Ghosh has fun with language. Sea of Poppies positively burbles with bastardised manglings on a quite staggeringly wonderful scale. There's the Captain Haddock-like 'Avast with your launderbuzzing … damned luckerbaugs and wanderoos'; the nautical 'I see the problem … The traveller is unseized and the jib and martingale are afoul of the dolphin-striker' and the plain hilarious 'Malum Zikri! Captin-bugger blongi poo-shoo-foo. He hab got plenty sick!'

These painstakingly researched etymological oddities enrich the novel and bring the characters shimmeringly alive. Sea of Poppies is an exuberant adventure and deserves to be the paperback of the summer.