rectify this perceived lack rather than to properly understand their new ward. They remain unaware of Paulette’s abilities as a scholar, a linguist, and a naturalist, not least because she has the wit to realize that she is best advised to keep quiet. However, Paulette is bored by the enforced lack of occupation that is expected of a white woman. Marriage is the only option, but while Paulette realizes she is attracted to Zachary, she finds to her horror that Judge Kendalbushe, an elderly Englishman, wishes to marry her. Between this and the unwanted attentions of Benjamin Burnham himself, Paulette determines to escape, hidden, on theIbis when it sails. However, her appeals to Zachary for help fall on deaf ears.

Raja Neel Rattan Halder has, by contrast, led a life of almost complete indolence, governed by intricate custom and practice, which is vitally necessary that he maintain in order to preserve his position as zemindar of Rashkali, for his own sake as well as for the sake of the people who look to him for guidance. However, he is well aware that his world will disintegrate because he is in financial difficulties. When he is wrongly found guilt of forgery, Neel finds himself imprisoned and sentenced to be transported to Mauritius on the Ibis. Neel shares his imprisonment with an opium addict, Ah Fatt, and almost his first task, having accepted that his life has changed irrevocably, is to nurse Ah Fatt through an enforced withdrawal from the drug. Through this, the two men form an uneasy bond as they await transportation.

Though this disparate group of protagonists provides a microcosm of India in the early nineteenth century, Ghosh presents the reader with an intricate portrait of a multilayered society circumscribed at all levels by convention. It is also a society heavily dependent on one industry for its income; everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, is affected by the opium trade. No one is immune to its effects, economic or otherwise. As the narrative shows, however, this carefully constructed society rests on a fragile foundation. If the opium industry collapses, what will happen to these people?

As the group sails to Mauritius on the Ibis, various of its members are beset by danger, most particularly by the fear that they will be revealed to be something other than they have pretended to be. Despite their different backgrounds, the passengers and prisoners gradually form a community, mirroring that of the lascar seamen, and the ship gradually comes to stand for a new India, in which the poor and helpless fight for their rights when they are badly treated by the mostly white officers. Eventually, during a long night of brutality and revelation, the senior officers lose control of the ship, and some are killed. The community is broken asunder, with Serang Ali, Jodu, Neel, Ah Fatt, and Kalua fleeing the ship in a small boat and leaving behind Paulette and Deeti.

At this point, the novel draws to a close, but it is intended to be the first part of a trilogy of novels, the Ibis trilogy, in which Ghosh will explore the colonial history of India, principally through the portrayal of the opium industry but also through the transportation of indentured labor to Mauritius and to other British colonies. His approach is necessarily panoramic, with one character representing an entire social group, and yet he manages to portray society as a whole on a personal level. The reader identifies with and cares for the characters, knowing that whatever they have suffered so far is nothing compared to what they are going to experience as they take to the open sea and begin their long voyage into what is, effectively, a new society. Already there are hints that they are, however unintentionally, part of a grander story in which some of them will found dynasties and be remembered. In this novel, Ghosh also explores the ways in which people are perceived in the world, through language and appearance. People are easily persuaded that Zachary is a gentleman by the clothes he wears, although he is acutely aware that he might at any point be found to be not only a mere ship’s carpenter but also a mulatto. By the same token, Reid understands far more of the languages used by the lascars than the English officers who command the ship and who attempt to teach him how to speak properly to the seamen. In fact, the English colony prides itself on its ability to communicate with the Indian people, and yet Ghosh deftly shows the ways in which the Englishmen mangle the languages they try to speak because they do not learn them properly. The tragedy of the society that Ghosh portrays is that its disparate parts cannot communicate with one another. The community creating itself on the Ibis points the way forward, and it offers hope, although a fragile one.