Why you should read 'The Hungry Tide' by Amitav Ghosh:
- thesonderers
- Oct 4, 2020
- 1 min read
A review by Sanika Deo
"Beauty is nothing but the start of terror we can hardly bear, and we adore it because of the serene scorn it could kill us with." This is the beauty that can't be resisted. This very novel. It is a mixture of disturbance, and finding peace in disturbance.
Between the sea and the plains of Bengal, on the easternmost coast of India, lies an immense archipelago of islands. These are the Sundarbands. Here are no borders to divide fresh water from salt, river from sea, even land from water. Here, for hundreds of years, only the true dispossessed braved man- eating tigers and crocodiles who rule there, to eke a precarious existence from the mud.
It weaves together the tale of the arrival of Piyali Roy, who is stubbornly American, and of Kanai Dutt, a sophisticated Delhi businessman, that disturbs the delicate balance of settlement life.
As Piya goes through the mysterious watery labyrinth, who is on the track of the rare river dolphin, hires Fokir, an illiterate but proud local man to guide her through the backwaters, Kanai becomes her translator. From this moment, the tide begins to turn, and so does the journey.
This book consists of misunderstandings and changes, truly one of the unputdownable books by Amitav Ghosh. It tempts the reader on as if with an unsolved mystery, focusing dramatically on edgy exchanges between unusual individuals, blending tale after tale in a vast narrative close to the Bengali tradition of the river novel.
Comentarios