SEA OF POPPIES: AMITAV GHOSH

This is the second novel I have read by Ghosh, the first, THE GLASS PALACE, is set in Burma.  This one differs in that it's 1838, in India, just before the Opium Wars and much of the novel takes place on a ship carrying prisoners, migrants, and indentured servants to the Mauritius Islands.  Like his other books, we follow the story lines of characters from various stratas of society, first Deeti, a small time poppy farmer, who lives on the Ganges, near Benares.  When he husband dies, she escapes from ritual immolation of the wife, along with a lower caste farmer, named Kalua.  We also follow Zachary Reid, a freedman from Baltimore, who ships aboard the Abis, bound for Calcultta, where he befriends the various characters, and sets sail with them for their new lives, on the Mauritius Islands.  We also follow the tribulations of Raja Neel Hattan Halder, zeminder of Rashhali, a prince whose fortune is taken away by British courts, a result of bankruptcy.  He is imprisoned and sent to Mauritius on the Ibis.  The final two characters were childhood friends, Jodu, a low caste boatmen and Paulette, daughter of a French biologist.  They, too, end up on the Ibis,  Paulette, in disguise as a migrant, Jodu, as a crew member.  We get to see how these various groups, more or less imprisoned on the Ibis as it journeys west, fight for their rights on a ship run by an aging captain, a tyrannical first mate, and a innocent but moral second mate, one Zachary Reid, the American.  This is the first of Ghosh's trilogy so I am anxious to see what happens to the group once they arrive on the Islands.  The book, like many novels set at sea, ends up being an allegory for the world at this time, the British using their power to control and subjugate the 'others,' all in the name of spreading British law, goods, and the gospel.  Slowly, during the novel, we see the resurgence of strength in the 'others,' led interestingly by the two women, Deeti and Paulette.  I was a little put off by the end because we don't really find out whether they make their destination or not, as the novel ends with them still at sea, long boats rowing off with the radicals, women included, into a stormy sea.  I have the next novel, RIVER OF SMOKE, which came out in 2011 and Ghosh is at work on the final book of the trilogy.