The Novelist as Linkister

This article contextualizes Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy as part of a growing scholarly interest in oceanic narratives of the colonial encounter. It argues that Ghosh’s earlier writings on transoceanic and transnational connections provide a useful frame for reading the trilogy. Attention is paid to the ways in which the materiality of the ocean and non-human agency are important foci of the narrative. The article ends with a consideration of the ways in which postcolonial scholarship arising primarily from the African and South Asian contexts might usefully engage with the work of Sinologists and vice versa.