| Title | : | Gun Island |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 |
| Publication | : | First published September 10, 2019 |
B07DNDDFLD
Bundook. Gun. A common word, but one which turns Deen Datta's world upside down.
A dealer of rare books, Deen is used to a quiet life spent indoors, but as his once-solid beliefs begin to shift, he is forced to set out on an extraordinary journey; one that takes him from India to Los Angeles and Venice via a tangled route through the memories and experiences of those he meets along the way. There is Piya, a fellow Bengali-American who sets his journey in motion; Tipu, an entrepreneurial young man who opens Deen's eyes to the realities of growing up in today's world; Rafi, with his desperate attempt to help someone in need; and Cinta, an old friend who provides the missing link in the story they are all a part of. It is a journey which will upend everything he thought he knew about himself, about the Bengali legends of his childhood and about the world around him.
Gun Island is a beautifully realised novel which effortlessly spans space and time. It is the story of a world on the brink, of increasing displacement and unstoppable transition. But it is also a story of hope, of a man whose faith in the world and the future is restored by two remarkable women.
Gun Island Reviews
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A beautifully written, richly descriptive novel from Amitav Ghosh, of history, of legends, magic and folklore, environmentalism and our place in a world consumed by turbulence, endangered by global climate change. The contemporary world with its problems of migration, refugees, and Fortress Europe, and the personal search for identity, faced by so many, are encapsulated within the vibrant narrative and its colourful diversity of characters, and the life changing adventurous journey through a myriad of locations, of the middle aged protagonist, Deen Data. Deen is a New York dealer of rare books, with a Bengali background, feeling a sense of dissonance, feeling he is neither at home where he lives nor as part of the Indian Bengali community. His world and belief system is turned upside down as he is exposed to encounters with the likes of Piya, Tipu, and the Venetian Cinta, and opened to connections with an ancient history and mythologies, and of all their interconnections that link to him and who he is.
This is a story that could have missed its mark with the emphasis on climate change and environmentalism, but Ghosh sidesteps this by focusing on the micro level, making the characters come alive in the circumstances they find themselves in and the scenarios and dilemmas they face. This is a moving story of a search for identity, history, folklore and a world with desperately troubling issues, yet Ghosh interconnects and invigorates everything, the past with the present, the individual with the world, and leaves us with hope. A brilliant and thought provoking read. Many thanks to John Murray Press for an ARC. -
Gun Island is a contemporary novel worth savouring rather than devouring, and as we travel seamlessly between times and continents we are treated to an epic adventure of immense breadth and depth. Encompassing a range of themes including important and prevalent topical issues such as climate change, the refugee crisis and the influx of migrants flowing through Europe looking for a better, safer life, Ghosh holds a mirror up to ourselves for us to see the dire state we currently find ourselves in. It's an exquisitely written exploration of myth, legend, history, magic and folklore set against the struggle for identity and finding a place in the world you feel as though you belong, and Ghosh contrasts the characters personal struggles against those of the wider world.
The cast of characters are so beautifully painted that each comes alive on the page, and we journey with main protagonist Bengali-American Deen whilst he attempts to discover himself. It is a vivid and richly-imagined piece and I found it rather moving and poignant as well as thoroughly absorbing and engaging from beginning to end. Although it points out the serious problems that places our world at the brink of collapse Ghosh also shows that there is reason to be hopeful. This is an entertaining read with lots to say on the state of the world we inhabit and is both illuminating and thought-provoking. A superb and highly ambitious book! Many thanks to John Murray for an ARC. -
A very weird story .
An attempt at mixing up many issues , creating a hodgepodge of events.
The issues touched upon in this book are:
-culture and belief
-mysticism
- magic
- ability to converse with /understand non human animals
- environmental issues and climate change
- slavery and trafficking
- illegal immigrants and their problems faced
I may be missing an issue or two
The story happens in the Sunderbans, Italy ( especially Venice ) and a small time frame in New York.
Main characters include
Dinu, an Indian antique book dealer settled in New York
Cinta, an Italian professor of ? Culture studies ? Old books
Piya, an Indian environmentalist and activist
Rafi and Tipu, two low socio-economic class Bengali youths whose lives are intermingled and mysterious things happen to them
All sorts of animals and marine creatures and environmental phenomena play a supporting role
Initially starting as legend of Manasa devi, her serpents and a Gun merchant who is not obsequious to her , and suffers tbereof , this story soon veers off into the absurd.
Can't say I disliked it, but it was like reading a chimera of fantasy and facts. -
I guess I start out by saying I have really liked Amitav Ghosh's other books - I have read most of them, and when I picked up this one I saved it for a while before reading it. Unfortunately, it is by far the one I have enjoyed least.
I have put the most part of this review in a spoiler, as it does discuss the main themes of the book.
Ghosh's strength in his previous books has been his excellent characters and his ability to weave an intricate story around them. He picks up on historical events and researches them carefully to run an authentic story line, and with his excellent descriptive writing sets it all beautifully.
In my view this was missing from the most part of this book.
So for me very disappointing, and I really must re-read some of the books by Ghosh that I loved.
If the fiction world is headed towards climate change based novels, I will be steering clear. If you want the Sundarbans, the go for his
The Hungry Tide, which is streets ahead!
Another reviewer called this 'Dan Brownesque' with the simple way it rolled out and answers found Deen, our main character. That seems about right. Where did Ghosh, the master storyteller go?
First dud of the year for me.
2 sad stars. -
A surreal, transcontinental tale of climate change & distress migration that straddles the animal & human kingdoms, and spans the 17th & 21st centuries. I quite enjoyed this, though I'm pretty sure I'm going to be dreaming of venomous snakes and spiders tonight...
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Ok, now I know if I want to read him again.
The first half was almost a 4 star despite all the strange intersects and disconnecting portions of continuity. Because the writing was mood placing and thorough. Just a wonderful job for the Sundurbans endlessly changing waterways and marshes, but also for the magic or "other" non-physical, almost spiritual or at least "of spirit" level to the posits.
But then it wasn't that at all. It was magic realism run amok with social warrior organizing theory dissertations in great lengths. Interceded with loose cannon angles of people and feelings stirred with huge Leftist straws. Everyone at all logical or more common sensed than Marx is looked upon as one of those "far right-wingers". In fact that right winger phrase is used dozens of times for anyone who isn't Cinta encapsulated.
So the last half leaves you with 100 details flying in the air and none of them make plotting sense to speak of at all- but protract to prove his theory points. Most of which are occluded in half by any comparisons to the now Earth reality. Some seem put there just for the pathos of effusions.
Good, good writer. Not a great story- but with historical periods and Venice onus in particular this will appeal to many readers who want to go to "another place". Magic realism fails in this one, IMHO. It's like a story written by a professor who has read too much Howard Zinn history and believes that it is the actual past. It's way, way too polemic taught and spoken in "eyes" and in tone of voice. Every character being a solid, sold and card carrying member of the "choir" on top of it.
No, I won't be reading him again. And if I was Piya, I would run back to Oregon/ Washington and change my address. Beware of any guy over 60 who still thinks like an immature 20 year old and doesn't know why he missed the love boat. Add to that the precognition elements and the other dozen nasty critter attraction features! Ugh, honestly the mix of subject matters here was not only hodgepodge unconnected but also at times ridiculous. The Gun Merchant legend did not at all hold it all together either.
My Italian relatives in Sicily would give this one a 1 or 2 star rating. I'm sure of it. Not for one or two reasons either, but for at least 6 to 10.
Just now, hours later, I read some of the other reviews. It rather shocks me that so many people become so enamored of the prose that they missed the entire lack of connection of the parts to a solid novel form. In this case the parts never became a whole at all. -
It’s unusual for me to read a novel while knowing with pretty high confidence what the author is trying to achieve. It certainly looks like Ghosh is following his own advice from
The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, which explores why so little recent literature has examined the current impacts of climate change. There is plenty of futuristic post-apocalyptic so-called cli-fi, but that tends to consist of survivalist thrillers. Ghosh concludes that climate change seems too outlandish and supernatural for contemporary fiction, which is preoccupied by individual emotions. In ‘Gun Island’ he seeks to reconcile the two, by depicting climate change as weird and uncanny then delving into his characters’ emotional responses to it. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think the combination always gels, but it’s a really fascinating attempt. Writing fiction about a changing climate that daily life encourages us to studiously ignore is a huge challenge. Ghosh seeks to reconcile unfolding disaster and the daily mundane using a search for a myth that evolves into a quest to help the vulnerable.
The main character, Deen, is a depressive rare book dealer with the extraordinary freedom to drop his whole life in New York and jaunt to Venice or Bangladesh to satisfy his curiosity. His privileged ability to cross borders is contrasted with the refugee characters, Rafi and Tipu, who suffer danger and exploitation in their tortuously slow journey from Bangladesh to Europe. Yet Deen’s skin colour still makes any tiny eccentricity of behaviour suspicious on American aeroplanes. There wasn’t any recognition that Deen’s many transatlantic flights generated massive carbon emissions, though. As someone who isn’t fond of travelling, I find it extraordinary that people can just ignore the destructive waste involved in taking a flight. (I gave up flying in 2008.) I can understand wanting to visit distant family, but Deen’s spur-of-the-moment acceptance of invitations to cross the Atlantic seemed excessive. Anyway, Deen is an interesting and sympathetic protagonist, largely reactive in his behaviour but thoughtful in his contemplation of events. He receives quite a lot of infodumps from various characters, on environmental, humanitarian, and historic topics. These aren’t as gracefully integrated into the narrative as, say,
Kim Stanley Robinson manages. Perhaps because literary fiction is not usually required to convey technical information, whereas this is continually necessary in sci-fi. For literary fiction to adequately process climate change, it may need to adopt a more sci-fi-like approach, as by definition the surrounding world is not just a backdrop but a critical part of the narrative. The setting can even become the main character. That said, historical fiction has to do quite a bit of the same work establishing the setting and Ghosh has excellent form as a historical novelist. I enjoyed
Sea of Poppies and
River of Smoke very much. Still, his focus on climate change as uncanny gives ‘Gun Island’ a very different tone to either of them.
What makes ‘Gun Island’ original, I think, is the way that it's actively struggling to understand the contradictions of contemporary life. The refugee crisis, extreme weather events, species extinctions, and neo-fascism all feature prominently, yet so do individual interpersonal dramas and exploration of the titular myth. Reconciling all this tidily would be extraordinarily difficult and I don’t think Ghosh manages it. Not that I’d necessarily expect him tie it all up neatly. There are some very striking scenes in Venice in particular, however I wasn’t very keen on the ending.
Ending aside, there are moments of beautifully expressed insight scattered throughout ‘Gun Island’. This one really captures something about the anxieties of surveillance capitalism:Now, staring at my dwindling savings, I began to wonder whether this was the fate that awaited me.
Searching for answers, I immersed myself in the statistics and probabilities that were constantly thrust upon me by anonymous robo-messages: how long would I live? How many years would my savings last if I had to be committed to a nursing home?
What if I lived to ninety-five; did I have enough insurance?
I keyed in the question and stared in alarm at the numbers that appeared before me: the odds were good enough that I felt compelled to reach for my credit card. But no sooner had I paid for the extra insurance than another window popped up, displaying the odds of my living to a hundred and three - and I saw, to my dismay, that they were no smaller than those of a passer-by being hit by an icicle falling off my windowsill. And since that was a possibility against which I was already insured, I could think of no good reason not to reach for my credit card again.
But even that brought me no peace of mind: it was as if I were tumbling down a rabbit hole of mathematical uncertainty. I fell into a kind of paralysis, a state of drawn-out, perpetual panic.
Deen’s near-farcical worry that he might live a long life is contrasted very neatly with the risk of sudden death from climate change related freak weather or simple bad luck. Ghosh is particularly adept at exploring the theme of risk and probability, one that could hardly be more relevant to climate change:But even as this was going through my mind a tremor of doubt crept through me. How could one know? Was there some kind of abacus somewhere that allowed one to determine whether an experience fell into the realm of chance? No, of course not, because any number of inexplicable things could happen without disproving the possibility of their being connected by chance. In this, chance was like God - nothing that happened, no event or eventuality, could either prove or disprove its immanence. And, at the same time, like God, chance provided reassurance, safety, cleanliness, purity. Wasn’t that why chance was so often said to be ‘pure’? - because it flowed over the world like a fresh mountain stream cleansing everything it touched. To cease to believe in it was to cross over into the territory of fate and destiny, devils and demons, spells and miracles - or, more prosaically, into the conspiratorial universe of the paranoiac, where hidden forces decide everything.
I hope more literary authors take up the baton and write novels that examine climate change as sincerely as Ghosh does here. A comparison that occurred to me is Ali Smith’s
Spring, which also explores the refugee crisis and social media with great sensitivity and acuity. I adored
Spring and wonder if it hung together better than ‘Gun Island’ thanks to its mosaic of narrative points of view. Kim Stanley Robinson’s
New York 2140, my favourite climate change novel, has much the same structure, whereas ‘Gun Island’ stays in Deen’s first person perspective throughout despite its extensive cast. I wonder how effective a climate change novel can be when narrated by a single individual, even if that individual hears from a variety of other people throughout. Climate change is very emphatically a collective problem that requires us to look far beyond the individual. Not that our individual Western lifestyles won’t have to change to reduce carbon emissions, of course. Still, I think first person is a slightly odd choice for a novel such as this. I wonder if a mixed third person perspective would have lifted ‘Gun Island’ from intriguing to brilliant. -
3.5
The treasure-hunt plot proved to be a great vehicle to combine the ancient legend and contemporary climate change problems that, merged together, constitute the backbone of the book, and I adored it. However, I have a number of issues with the second part of the book. I believe this book manifests a tendency towards a sort of mysticism which the author tries to connect to topical issues of social injustice (human trafficking as related to illegal immigration, climate change) in a way that I can only describe "airy," although I am more sure it was not ment to give off such an impression. I now understand why Gun Island has sometimes been described as falling under the category of magical realism, which also helps me understand why I could not connect with it (I detest magical realism with a passion. To me, either you explain or you're dead. Magical realism's typical brand of fondness for irrationalism is incredibly unproductive to me, both emotionally and intellectually. Call me small-minded if you like). This may appeal to some readers, but it does not appeal to me.
Secondly, I have also heard that many reviewers criticize Gun Island for its didacticism. I believe they have a point, but not because the novel is indeed full of information about a number of topics (I rather believe that, especially in part one, most of these informative passages are quite well embedded in the narrative). No; I believe they have a point because the book tries to make its point(s) by counterposing scientific explanations and mysticism. Both are validated (please do not equate my assertion that the book veers towards mysticism with a rejection of science and scientificity; as I said, the book is also very informative), but in my opinion the latter imposes itself more strongly. This dangerously pushes the book's informative aim towards mellow didacticism and moralistic babble, when really it is evident that the author is a well-learned, knowledgeable intellectual and a very capable writer. I think that I will just consider this book a half-failed, half-successful experiment, then. -
This one is a good book that I thoroughly enjoyed but did not turn out to be a literary masterpiece that Amitav Ghosh, its author, is known for churning out. This is his second attempt at mixing science with magical realism (the first one being The Calcutta Chromosome which was brilliant) but falters at a few levels. While the story is gripping and is relevant to our times, commenting strongly on the ill-effects of climate crisis, it leaves many loose ends. It may also be interpreted as author's attempt to allow the readers to make the story their own basis their beliefs and knowledge, but it does not come out as effective as say the spinning top of the movie Inception.
The book is filled with fauna - snakes, spiders, whales, dolphins, crabs, worms -, with legends - Banduki Sadagar, Manasa Devi - and with terrestrial landscapes - Shifting Sunderbans, Sinking Venice, Burning forests of America - and deals with many serious issues of the current times - migration and environmental debacles - in the form of a thriller's narrative. And I would give it to the author for bringing all of them together as we finally have a genre of writing in which climate crisis drives the story.
How I wish this book to have lasted for another 100 pages to allow for the narrative to mature and characters to develop in a much deeper and coherent manner. I would still recommend this to readers. Do not get dissuaded as my comparison of this work is with his brilliant The Shadow Lines and Ibis Trilogy. This book, in itself, is worth a read that would keep you at the edge of your seat. Or bed. Or boat. Or jetty. -
Beautifully written, as other Ghosh books I've read, I love the interweaving of myth and realism as his take on current events unfolds through the eyes of a rare book dealer living in Brooklyn. Deen has several moments of truth, and we accompany him as he goes deep into the Sundarbans, a mangrove swamp area between
Bengal and Bangladesh, Los Angeles and Venice, culminating on a ship in the Mediterranean. Ghosh has a love of the planet and its people, but through this lovely book he quietly expresses his rage at the way they are doing one another in at this time. Immigration atrocities are explored in an original way, and more than a little magic realism appears. This is a lovely hallucinogenic read that transports the reader through time. -
This book was such a let down after the author's epic "Ibis Trilogy" (
Sea of Poppies,
River of Smoke,
Flood of Fire). It is a humdrum sort to novel with rare flashes of brilliance. The liberal use of Italian and Bengali phrases interrupts the flow of the narrative. In this Dan Brownesque book the author tries unsuccessfully to address myriad issues - climate change, refugees, human trafficking, animal extinction, environmental pollution, mysticism - and fails spectacularly. I had expected better from Amitav Ghosh, now anointed with a Jnanpeeth Award. -
Thank you to NetGalley and John Murray for the ARC
In literature there are things like genre, style, themes, motives, etc, ...well Gun Island is one eclectic novel. It went in all directions campus novel, historical fiction, thriller, magical realism, environmentalism, etymology, biology, migration, fairytal/folklore, with a dash of snakes on a plane.
Rare books dealer, new York based, Bengali Deen is drawn into the story of Bonduki Sadagar, or the Gun Merchant on a visit back to India and the Sundarbans. He meets marine biologist Piya, troubled youth Tipu, and the almost feral shrine keeper Rafi. His old friend Italian historian Cinta unlocks the links between the old tale and historical fact, while in the meantime history repeats. The historical and fictional are connected to the now and contemporary issues by magical realistic occurances.
I loved the odd mish mash of the current mediterranean boat refugee-crisis, environmental issues and the exotic locations, old folk tale, and histirical detective aspects. -
"Was there some kind of abacus somewhere that allowed one to determine whether an experience fell within the realm of chance? No, of course not, because any number of inexplicable things could happen without disproving the possibility of their being connected by chance. In this, chance was like God—nothing that happened, no event or eventuality, could either prove or disprove it's immanence. And at the same time, like God, chance provided reassurance, safety, cleanliness, purity."
– Amitav Ghosh, 'Gun Island'
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PART I (The positive)
Dinnanath Dutta is a dealer of rare books and Asian antiquities in Brooklyn. On one of his annual visits to Kolkata—where he was born and brought up—Deen/Dinu finds himself increasingly getting involved in an ancient local legend. Dinu's journey of unraveling the mysterious legend of the snake God—Mansa Devi—and Bandooki Sadagar or the Gun Merchant, takes him to the interiors of the mangrove forests of Bengal and eventually to Venice. Aided by a Marine biologist, a historian who specialises in the history of Venice, and two young teenage boys, Dinu's story fuses in with the fates of these people, revealing in its course the very unfortunate global events that have been forcing people and animals equally to leave their homes and migrate.
From the very beginning, Ghosh establishes the broad themes of climate change and migration, loaded with motifs of animals disappearing from their natural habitats and appearing in unfamiliar geographical locations; water-levels rising and falling; people migrating to get away from life-threatening circumstances.
Gun Island's protagonist, Dinu, is middle-aged, anxious and largely disoriented person, who ironically being the hero has no heroic characteristics. In fact, only with the intervention of Piya (a Marine Biologist) and Cinta (a Historian) he is able to disentangle the legend which pervades the story. Very few authors, in my opinion, can create a story with an unlikeable but as unbelievably realistic character as Dinu at the heart of the it.
Ghosh's new book examines—as in most of his other books—the ideas of time and space by juxtaposing Sundarban and Venice; of love and longing through Dinu and Piya as well as Tipu and Rafi's relationships; and ultimately of memory and storytelling though the legend of Mansa Devi and her shrine protected by generations of the same family. The novel simultaneously blurs the line between the natural and the explainable and the supernatural or the unexplainable truths—by disrupting the known paradigms of Time through Tipu's 'Visions'.
The absolute beauty of the book's narrative symmetry is seen in the two-part division of the book. The balancing of the plot, marks Amitav Ghosh once again as a master storyteller. Comprehensively written, the book strengthens the pattern seen in his previous works of fictions—of the level of exhaustive research that goes into the creation of the each story. Amitav Ghosh's 'Gun Island' brings the ancient world of myths and legends at par with the modern developing world and it's crisis.
PART II (The Negative)
Spoiler Alert!
The relationship between an author and a reader is strengthened by the harmony between admiration and criticism. Reading critically entails, continually meditating on how a story could have been made better by bridging in the gaps.
Dinnanath Dutta, a dealer of rare books and artefacts, is a protagonist who gets on your nerves frequently. He is too involved in his own life to look at the larger realities orchestrated around him. In other words, he is too real a character. Dinnanath mirrors the insecurities and ignorance of a person unable to fathom a world beyond their immediate struggles.
With a protagonist who does not seem to put two and two together without the assistance of his acquaintances and colleagues and a plot that tends to reiterate the same ideas constantly throughout the narrative, Amitav Ghosh creates his newest novel—'Gun Island'.
What choices will Dinu make after he loses his closest friend — Cinta — who kept him stable and helped him unwrap all the mysteries he found himself in? Who was the Egyptian woman Tipu visits and travels with in the Blue boat? Why did Tipu had his visions? These are the few questions that the climax of the book left me with.
Additionally, was Tipu saved by a myth or by a miracle? What role did each individual — Dinu, Tipu, Rafi, Piya, Cinta — play in the myth of Bandooki Sadagar? Why did Dinu become so disoriented after his trip to the shrine? ... are the larger questions that arose in my mind.
For all the symmetry of the book, the second half felt much less interesting than the first with ideas and motifs being repeated time and again. Even the intellegentally drawn division between aspects of climate change juxtaposed with supernatural elements raises questions from time to time.
Having said all the above, the positives still weigh higher than the gaps. -
”We go about our daily business through habit, as though we were in the grip of forces that have overwhelmed our will; we see shocking and monstrous things happening all around us and we avert our eyes; we surrender ourselves willingly to whatever it is that has us in its power.”
I had previously read Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, which led me to this book. It is not advertised as a sequel but is set in the same area of the world, the Sundarbans, and features several of the same characters, many years later. Themes include current issues such as migrations and climate change.
Narrator Dinanath "Deen" Datta, a New York-based Bengali American, is an antiquarian book dealer. He believes he is a rational person; however, he encounters what appear to be a string of mystical events and struggles to make sense of them. He travels frequently. While in the Sundarbans, he visits a shrine to the mythical snake goddess, Manasa Devi, dedicated by the titular Gun Merchant in the 17th century. The story contains encounters with many venomous creatures, such as snakes and spiders, and cataclysmic weather events, such as tornadoes, violent storms, and floods. The storyline is, intentionally, filled with coincidences.
The writing is strong, but the structure is odd. In a series of fragmented episodes, Deen travels across the world to places such as Venice, Kolkata, Los Angeles, and New York, tracing the legend of the Gun Merchant, which is reenacted in present times. The reader will need to connect the dots. I wish the migration story of displaced persons had been more fleshed out. It takes place in bits and pieces, with lots of “sound bites.” I did not enjoy it as much as The Hungry Tide, which is one of my favorite books, but I will be reading more of Ghosh’s works. -
“Reading was my means, I thought, of escaping the narrowness of the world I lived in. But was it possible that my world had seemed narrow precisely because I was a voracious reader? After all, how can any reality match the worlds that exist only in books? “
This was my first Amitav Ghosh novel and I doubt it will be my last. While the story touched on many prevalent issues (ie climate change & migration) , what I most appreciated was the way they were tied together. We see the impact humanity has on the world, both negative and positive. For instance, we see how climate change is related to mass migrations of both people and animals. Ghosh shows u how we’re all interconnected. What we do in the past shapes the future, one person can shape the lives of millions. The world, the people in it, the decisions we make, are all the individual threads of one giant tapestry. Pull one thread and it can destroy the whole thing or add one thread it and it makes it stronger.
This novel takes us to some of the world’s most beautiful places: the Sundarbans of Bangladesh and India and the canals of Venice being my favorite. There’s a touch of magical realism mixed in here too. We learn some Bengali folklores and legends and a good bit of European history as well. The cast of characters were diverse and relatable people who, like many of us, are just trying to figure out where they belong. This is probably not a book I’d usually pick up as contemporary fiction isn’t usually my favorite genre but I’m glad I did because it went way beyond that. It was definitely worth the read! I won this book in a goodreads giveaway. -
A story which weaves a Bengali folk tale from the 17th century with today’s catastrophic events brought by climate change, from the migrations of both animals and humans, which have terrible consequences on the displaced, for the animals struggling for survival and the humans desperate for opportunities for decent living, who are treated as just another commodity to collect body parts and fuel political disputes and make financial gains.
Through all this is Dean, a middle aged Bengali man who has made a life as an antique bookseller in Brooklyn, New York, and has been asked by an elderly family friend to uncover the roots of the obscure tale of the “Gun Merchant”, which has only been verbally passed on through the generations with a specific injunction against it being written down. Inexplicably, there still exists a shrine in the muddy areas of the marshes and wild forests of Sundarbans, which is in danger of being washed away into the rivers and may soon be lost forever. Dean is sent on a mission to discover what the details of the Gun Merchants tale were and will soon discover that stories from the past have a way of impacting our lives in complex, unimaginable ways.
A fascinating read, which for me raised questions rather than providing answers, though I believe that was the point. An excellent author who treats his readers with respect and invites us to cogitate on complex notions of life and fate and the powers that move the universe. -
"there is a fourth function of myth....of how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances."-joseph campbell
মনসা দেবীর পুরাণ, বন্দুকি সওদাগরের অভিযান,পুরনো মন্দির,সুন্দরবন থেকে শুরু হয়ে ইউরোপে অবৈধ অভিবাসন,বৈশ্বিক উষ্ণায়ন,পরিবেশ দূষণের মতো সমসাময়িক ইস্যু নিয়ে বিস্তৃত লেখা;মাদারীপুর, কলকাতা,তুরস্ক,নিউইয়র্ক, রোম,ভেনিস,সিসিলি জুড়ে বয়ে চলা দীনানাথ,সিনটা, গিসা, পিয়া,রাফি,টিপু ও পৃথিবীর সকল প্রাণীর বেঁচে থাকা ও তাদের বিবিধ সংগ্রামের লৌকিক ও অলৌকিক গল্প।অসাধারণ!!
(১২ জুলাই,২০২১) -
Romanzo a due facce
Scrittore indiano di lingua inglese, Amitav Ghosh è autore di diversi pregevoli romanzi (dei nove che ho letto il mio preferito è “Le linee d’ombra”[1988]), negli ultimi anni particolarmente impegnato sul fronte della sensibilizzazione ai rischi del cambiamento climatico, come si evidenzia ad esempio nel saggio “La grande cecità” pubblicato anche in Italia due anni orsono.
Con ”L’isola dei fucili” si cimenta nel tentativo di mettere il proprio talento e l’esperienza di abile narratore al servizio dell’acquisita militanza ecologica inserendo nel racconto una serie di elementi che testimoniano le ripercussioni delle catastrofi ambientali sui territori e, di conseguenza, sui destini delle famiglie e delle singole persone.
Ghosh è cresciuto in Bangladesh dove periodicamente ritorna e mantiene legami ed è con cognizione di causa che in quella terra martoriata dalle alluvioni pone la parte iniziale del romanzo, in particolare nelle Sunderbands, l’immensa laguna ai confini con l’India che mi ha immediatamente evocato quello che credo sia il primo libro di cui conservo memoria: I Misteri della giungla nera di Emilio Salgari che laggiù era ambientato.
In ”L’isola dei fucili” la narrazione inizialmente improntata alla ricerca delle origini e del significato di antiche leggende bengalesi iscritte nella tradizione orale del popolo ma anche lungo le pareti di un tempio nascosto fra le paludi (…e qui l’illusione salgariana sembrava apparentemente prendere corpo), nella seconda parte del romanzo muta, in modo inatteso e a dire il vero piuttosto forzato, in una storia che pone al centro il fenomeno della migrazione, umana ma anche animale. Trattandosi di vicende che coinvolgono personaggi bengalesi, la destinazione è inevitabilmente l’Europa e in particolare l’Italia, così che a Venezia, simbolo e paradigma della fragilità nei confronti del mutamento climatico, va ad articolarsi la seconda metà del romanzo.
Man mano che si procede sembra tuttavia che Ghosh tenda a subordinare ai temi che suscitano il suo interesse militante la coerenza e la linearità di un racconto che a sua volta va un po’ alla deriva, da un lato accumulando dolorose testimonianze di personaggi migranti, toccanti ma non sempre funzionali alla trama, dall’altro cercando di recuperare l’abbandono della trama originaria tramite scene e dinamiche che talora rischiano di proiettarci in una storia dalle tinte DanBrownesche!
Ne consegue in definitiva un palese squilibrio in cui il racconto epico e fantastico lascia il posto a un romanzo a tesi, di cui non si possono non condividere le premesse e le basi scientifiche e la serietà del messaggio, ma che finisce per perdere la sostanza e la coesione narrativa, elemento di cui un’opera di fiction non può fare a meno. -
Sadly this turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. The start was brilliant, I was seriously fascinated by the Gun Merchant legend and his attempt at retracing the old temple and its significance. I loved all the details about the Sundarbans, such a magical place with all those rivers converging, and marshes and tigers still roaming, no wonder people created such fantastic stories around it. I enjoyed the little stories about local people, about their struggles, about the why behind so many people put themselves in danger just to emigrate.
I loved how the process of decoding the legend took him to Venice, of all places. The connections made between old languages and places and other historical events and weather was truly captivating. I find the process of putting things together, connecting dots to come up with stories behind objects/evens from history very, very interesting. I even liked the bits about Venice, old Venice and some of the stories around it.
Everything resonated with me and I'm really sad that it a;ll turned sour by the end of the book. The idea of premonitions just alluded at in the first part of the book, become a sort of given reality, something that cannot not be believed, something that is truly happening! Then we have to put up with "miracles": unexplained storms, unexplained roaming of cetaceans in the Mediterranean Sea...Seriously I just couldn't stomach that. And on top of that I've felt that some of his theories about weather and especially about social and political issues dipped into conspiracies territory. No, just no!! I could not deal with it. I can understand a bit of magic, a bit of fantastic, I can even enjoy a bit of it in books, but this was stretched too far for me to be able to accept and even less to appreciate! -
Legendary labour.
Amitav Ghosh is a master storyteller so I was somewhat surprised here to find a narrative arc that seemed to lack his immersive touch. Gun Island gives us a mixed bag of a story that ticks off many of today’s hot literary topics: magic realism, immigration, climate change, the need for an overriding hero.
The first half of Gun Island is a laboured telling of how his narrator, Bengali born but brought up in America, finds himself in India caught up in a harrowing trip to a remote wetlands.
In the second half of the book, the pace picks up somewhat and the legend then catapults the reader
Unfortunately, this can’t be on my favourite list of Amitav Ghosh but nevertheless I thank the publisher John Murray for the review copy courtesy of NetGalley. -
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in a Goodreads giveaway.
I am sorry to say that I did not enjoy this novel. It saddens me because, politically, I am very much on the same page as the author.
The problems I had with the text are:
1. There are too many coincidences that make the plot nearly wholly unbelievable. Ghosh introduces themes of the supernatural, including precognition, that I felt were handled in a clunky manner. I don’t care for books in which it seems the author has a grand message with the plot and characters becoming secondary to the message.
2. Much of the dialogue is simply info dumping and exposition. Every character encountered by the protagonist is placed by the author as a source of information, whether about climate change, the refugee crisis, human trafficking, or to convince the skeptical Deen that unseen forces are creating miracles that basically insta-solve complicated problems.
3. The ending is maudlin and groan-worthy.
In the interest of not piling on the negativity, I will leave my criticisms at that. Ghosh is obviously a man who cares deeply about the current state of the world and his empathy for those souls fleeing their homelands in search of something better is commendable. So, while I admire the ideas driving the novel, I was ultimately disappointed in the overly didactic way those ideas were presented in the text. -
This book is like Indira Soundarrajan books. Telling the story that has both supernatural and historical aspects. It was interesting to know how the words from other languages morph into a different word/meaning in the local language in which the story is told. I hear about the story of Manasa Devi and the gun merchant for the first time. How banduki sadaagar, meaning gun merchant, in Bengali means the merchant of Venice when the words are properly identified in Arabic and translated. The story of Manasa Devi is imbued in the storyline and in the development of the characters.
However, the story also talks about the history of human trafficking and slavery that repeats itself over and over. And the current immigration issues that impact every nation due to this human trafficking. On the one hand, the migrants dream of a better future and salvation from their current miseries by subjecting themselves to human trafficking to cross the borders illegally as they have no option legally. On the other, the locals of these nation fear the negative impact on their economic status. Europeans who were once masters have no say with migrants voluntarily coming to their nation and depriving the Europeans of one source of income, slave trading.
This book is different from the other two books of this author that I read so far. -
Ugh, I really wanted to like this book as it purports to be a novel about climate change and cultural crisis from an "own voices" perspective.
Deen (aka Dinath) is a dealer in rare books, who finds himself drawn into the tale of a historical "Gun Merchant" who operated between the Sundarbans of Bengal and the markets of Venice and Sicily, as well as into the lives of current and ex-pat Bengalis and Italians.
However, I found that the writing didn't subscribe enough to magical realism to be exempt from the fact that its coincidences (whilst ascribed as spiritual) were unrealistic, forcedly over-convenient and implausible.
I also found the pacing to be erratic, the romantic aspect to be sudden and from the male gaze, and the ending to be rushed and abrupt.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly what was unpalatable about this novel, but it felt somehow immature and 'off', and sadly isn't one I can recommend.
Thanks though to the publisher and Netgalley for the digital copy in return for an honest and unbiased review. -
I’ve enjoyed every Amitav Ghosh book I’ve read, so I was very excited to obtain an ARC for GUN ISLAND.
Much of this thriller is centred around places I’ve been to in India with wonderful details about life there, the effect of climate change, immigration and technology. It moves to other places, New York, Oregon, Venice and Bangladesh while keeping the theme resonant.
The story mixes Bengali myths and reality with a slow burn plot that still kept me gripped until the climax. The story follows Deen, an antique book seller, as he navigates a world that is more magical than he first thought. Perhaps some of the minor characters and their connections could have been fleshed out more, but these are minor grumbles of an outstanding novel.
Deen is a great character – a ‘coconut’ who feels out of place in New York, yet doesn’t fit in as Bengali in India. His story of history and belonging and heritage will stay with me for some time. -
Kudos to Ghosh for using his talents as a novelist to bring to life some aspects of climate change and migration. I especially enjoyed the story’s geographic sweep and use of Hindu mythology, as well as the background material Ghosh braids into the story, although the didactic content and mysticism were a bit much for me at times.
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Interesting novel but was too slow for myself though
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At the moment I'm working on a book about rising sea levels, so I've been on the lookout for books about people faced with increasing flooding from the sea and extreme weather. My search led me first to Amitav Ghosh's
Gun Island which is a wide ranging story of Bengladeshis, Indians, and Venetians facing escalating threats. The first two-thirds is very down-beat, but the end is almost a fairy tale of people and nature overcoming climate challenges.
The Hungry Tide, published nearly 15 years previously, is a sort of prequel, although I've not found a mention of Ghosh commenting on this. It contains some of the most evocative writing about weather I've come across, as well as chilling analysis of what was happening at the turn of the 21st century in the great flood plain and myriad islands of the Ganges and the Sundarbans. I found myself reading late into the night as I raced to find out whether anyone survived a massive weather event, even though by the time I got to the end of the book, I knew that some people did since they feature prominently in
Gun Island.
Both books are good reading for their story, and for the messages and warnings they carry. -
Amitav Ghosh has been writing novels for a while now, and this is his latest. It is also my first of his. I had a bit of trepidation going in for I thought it was going to be a bit dystopian and depressing. And though it is not a joyous romp by any means, there is a lot more hope and wonder expressed in these pages than expected. It is a novel very much of our times, in particular out times of blindly causing, through ignorance and greed, what may be the planet's sixth great extinction. Around this dire possibility Ghosh weaves an ancient Indian tale about a gun merchant who escapes to Gun Island while trying to escape the grasp of the Snake Goddess Devi.
The lead character is a Deen, a man living in Broo0klyn and working as an Antiquarian Book Seller. He is originally from India, and through a turn of events and coincidences, he goes to visit an ancient shrine to the Goddess Devi that depicts the story of a gun merchant. Events eventually lead him to Venice, where he helps a documentary film maker to interview Bengali refugees living in Venice. Ghosh addresses the refugee issue, which is definitely tied to the issue of climate change which will cause an untold number of refugees.
Ghosh is a strong and lucid writer. I was drawn in immediately to this wonderful tale. He creates a very comfortable space for the reader, and infuses magical realism into a tale that would otherwise be very dark and pessimistic. There is humor and wonder at parts of this book that make it a joy to read. The praise for this author is justly delivered. -
Thoroughly disappointed. No two ways about it. Definitely his worst.
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According to the narrator “there are few expressions in the English language that are less attractive to women than ‘Rare Book Dealer’” (p. 4). The narrator is both wrong and dumb.
