Transoceanic Perspectives in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Introduction

   • Juan-José Martín-González

   Pages 1-16

3. The ‘Oceanic Turn’ and the Indian Ocean: Maritime Criticism, Cosmopolitanism and Nineteenth-Century Oceanic Culture

   • Juan-José Martín-González

   Pages 17-71

4. Of Coolies, Lascars and the Kala Pani: Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies (2008)

   • Juan-José Martín-González

   Pages 73-101

5. Of Hongs, Achhas and Fanqui-Town: Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke (2011)

   • Juan-José Martín-González

   Pages 103-126

6. Of Buchas, Opium Wars and the Kali Yuga: Amitav Ghosh’s Flood of Fire (2015)

   • Juan-José Martín-González

   Pages 127-152

7. Conclusion

   • Juan-José Martín-González

   Pages 153-161

8. Back Matter

   Pages 163-167

   PDF

Transoceanic Perspectives in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy studies Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011) and Flood of Fire (2015) in relation to maritime criticism. Juan-José Martín-González draws upon the intersections between maritime criticism and postcolonial thought to provide, via an analysis of the Ibis trilogy, alternative insights into nationalism(s), cosmopolitanism and globalization. He shows that the Victorian age in its transoceanic dimension can be read as an era of proto-globalization that facilitates a materialist critique of the inequities of contemporary global neo-liberalism. The book argues that in order to maintain its critical sharpness, postcolonialism must re-direct its focus towards today’s most obvious legacy of nineteenth-century imperialism: capitalist globalization. Tracing the migrating characters who engage in transoceanic crossings through Victorian sea lanes in the Ibis trilogy, Martín-González explores how these dispossessed collectives made sense of their identities in the Victorian waterworlds and illustrates the political possibilities provided by the sea crossing and its fluid boundaries.

• Literature and the Environment
• Indian Ocean studies
• migration studies
• neo-Victorian studies
• nineteenth-century studies
• maritime studies
• South Asian culture
• Literature and Mobility
• Amitav Ghosh
• Literature and Postcolonial Studies

“In this very timely addition to Indian Ocean studies, Martín-González provides a highly textured reading of Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy. The author masterfully locates the trilogy within the current focus on transoceanic studies by drawing on a multiplicity of disciplines without losing sight of Ghosh’s literary talent. This study is an exciting new slant on Ghosh’s work which poses pressing questions about the significance of cosmopolitanism in the Global South.” (Felicity Hand, Senior Lecturer of English, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and editor of Durban Dialogues Dissected: An Analysis of Ashwin Singh's Plays (2020))

“What can be more pertinent than an excellent, transoceanic reading of Amitav Ghosh's excellent, transoceanic trilogy? This study is significant not just for its fresh reading of Ghosh's novels but also its critical interventions in such pressing and topical matters as globalization.” (Tabish Khair, Associate Professor of English, Aarhus University, Denmark, and author of The Thing About Thugs (2010))


"Through a series of richly detailed readings, Transoceanic Perspectives in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy brings timely critical focus to Ghosh’s figuring of the Indian Ocean. Situating the transoceanic spaces and encounters in these works as sites of transformative possibility, Martin-Gonzalez’s work is similarly one of illuminating potentiality in the incisive advances that it generates in dialogues between maritime criticism and postcolonial studies." (Charlotte Mathieson, Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century English Literature, University of Surrey, UK, author of Mobility in the Victorian Novel: Placing the Nation (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) and co-editor of the Palgrave series Studies in Mobilities, Literature, Culture with Marian Aguiar and Lynne Pearce)


“This book provides an in-depth analysis of Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy in relation to the Oceanic turn and maritime criticism in literary studies, offering a pertinent intervention in debates on capitalism, globalisation diaspora and migration. Drawing comparisons between the neo-Victorian representation of empire in the novels and contemporary trajectories of globalisation and the inequities inherent in it, this book reveals a new direction in the way in which Ocean worlds need to be considered in relation to postcolonial paradigms.” (Florian Stadtler, Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Literatures, University of Exeter, UK)

 

• University of Malaga, Málaga, Spain

  Juan-José Martín-González

Juan-José Martín-González is Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Málaga, Spain. He researches and publishes in the fields of maritime and migration studies, neo-Victorian fiction and postcolonialism.

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