Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide

John Thieme (University of East Anglia)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 10.3.1.03: Indian Writing and Culture: Post-colonial, 1947-present.
Vol. editors: Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Pavan Kumar Malreddy (J W Goethe University of Frankfurt), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2004

Places

India (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Unlike all of Ghosh’s previous works,

The Hungry Tide

(2004) is set in a single place, the Sundarbans, or “tide country”, region of West Bengal, a unique landscape of mangrove-forested islands and mudflats at the mouth of Ganges Delta. The novel includes numerous quotations from the

Duino Elegies

and Rilke’s belief that “life is lived in transformation” (

Elegy

7) is central to Ghosh’s representation of the area. He accentuates the extent to which the Sundarbans undergoes constant metamorphoses, both because of daily tidal flows, with sections of land being temporarily submerged and with seawater and freshwater intermingling, and because of the periodic devastation wrought by extreme monsoon and cyclonic weather. At the same time the novel also depicts the tide country as the…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1840 words

Citation: Thieme, John. "The Hungry Tide". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 December 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=19302, accessed 16 April 2024.]

Save this article