Review: The Hungry Tide, by Amitav Ghosh (Book on CD)

This was a wonderful novel to listen to. It is set in India and the reader is amazing. He narrates in perfect American-English then performs the voices of the various characters in mellifluous, Indian-accented English. The reader pronounces the names and other Bengali words and phrases with confidence and fluidity.

The story is set in the Sundarbans, an archipelago in the Bay of Bengal, at the mouth of the Ganges River. A young, American, marine biologist, Piya, and a businessman from Kolkata, Kanai, meet on a train. Both are headed to the Sundarbans, one to study dolphins and the other to visit his aunt and retrieve the personal journal left to him by his uncle. When Kanai and Piya cross paths again, we learn that Kanai is in love with Piya who appears to be in love with Fokir, the fisherman who saved her from drowning. But, alas, the fisherman has a wife. I’m making The Hungry Tide sound like a superficial romance and it is anything but.

The characters are interesting and their stories involving, but what makes The Hungry Tide special is the setting. The Sundarbans are geographically and culturally very different than anything we know and every page transports the reader to this exotic location. The tide country, as it is called, is an unforgiving environment that looms very large in the lives of the characters and is, in my opinion, as important as the plot and the characters to the novel.

I recommend this audio book for readers who might like to escape to a very different place and way of life.

Karen Recine