Amitav Ghosh’s Experimentation with Languages and Dialects in Ibis Trilogy (Published)
Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy at face value is a historical fictional work that recreates the murky opium trade between British India and China which culminates into a full blown war between England and China. However, the three novels Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire also explores political, social, commercial and linguistic intricacies of the early colonial period. This article examines how Amitav Ghosh throughout over-1600 pages of his much acclaimed trilogy experimented with at least 23 other languages and dialects, at the backdrop of the vast seascape of the Indian Ocean, from Cape Town to Hong Kong the Opium War between the British Empire and China in 1839.
Keywords: Amitav Ghosh, Ibis Trilogy, Indian Writing in English, Language