Myth, climate change and migration all come together in Gun Island to create a compelling story. Deen, comes from Kolkata and lives in New York where he is a rare book dealer. On a visit back home he encounters a shrine hidden in the Mangrove swamps and he becomes entwined in the centuries old story of how the shrine came to be built. We are whooshed back and forth between India, the USA and Venice. I loved Gun Island, missed a train stop because I was so engrossed.

I was sent a proof copy of Gun Island via NetGally

I wasn’t sure how I would feel about this book, whether it was for me or not, but the opening had me hooked. I loved the stories of all the people our main character met, I loved the descriptions of each city. The ending wasn’t for me, but it didn’t detract too much from an otherwise gloriously written book.

I so wanted to love this book. I did like it but it wasn’t in the same league as the sea of poppies trilogy or the glass palace. Too many threads and too many stories made a good but not great. There were however flashes of brilliance and the start was sensational Thank you netgalley for the opportunity to read it.

I started this book and initially thought it was going to be a struggle , very quickly it drew me in to a very well written story . It showed the different lives and dreams of a number of people going in different directions from different countries and backgrounds ,all eventually all meeting in Venice and joining a boat to welcome refugees to Italy . On the way there are "miraculous" sightings of large numbers of Dolphins , Porpoises , Whales and birds , as if they too were part of the welcome .I found Gun Island a very uplifting story.

Thanks to John Murray Press and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

I actually finished this book a number of weeks ago but wanted to ruminate on it for a while before I reviewed it. Did I like it? Yes..and no.

The story follows Deen, a rare books dealer of Bengali extraction. The Indian settings of Kolkata and the Sundarbans are portrayed evocatively, and Deen finds himself pulled back into a well-known local myth which might turn out to be more real than he assumes.

Along the way he meets Piya, an enigmatic marine biologist, Tipu, a rebellious young man and Rafi, who guards the shrine of the Gun Merchant. He is assisted by his old friend Cinta, a Venetian historian who has suffered more than her fair share of tragedy. Cinta was probably my favourite from the eclectic cast of characters we meet in this story.

If it's all sounding a bit weird it's because it is. Reality and myth become intertwined and history seems to repeat itself whilst Deen gets drawn deeper and deeper into the mystery. It's part detective story, part folktale, part supernatural thriller and part commentary on climate change, human trafficking and the plight of migrants.

There were some points when reading this book that I felt a real sense of tension and dread and I thought the supernatural elements were the strongest aspect of the story. The first third or so felt really solid, but as the story progressed it all started to unravel. It seemed like the author was trying to do too many things at once and it all just ended up being a bit incoherent and frustrating to read.

It's definitely an imaginative and unique story, I'm just not sure it managed to achieve what it set out to do.

In literature there are things like genre, style, themes, motives, etc, ...well <i>Gun Island</i> 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.

Not a bad book, it’s well written.
Thank you to both NetGalley and John Murray Press for sending me a eARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion

This is a complex and deeply layered novel that as well as carrying the main story line addresses some important current issues – climate change, environmental degradation, impact of modern “high tech” and urban life styles and trans-national migration (with all the abuses inherent in that). The core character Dianath Datta – Deen – was born in Calcutta, established an early reputation for research in Bengali story cycles, was offered a job in the US – and when his academic career stalled became a rare book dealer, Approaching 60, with no family and partner, his business failing, he is in personal turmoil. He decides to over-winter in Calcutta. There he is asked to explore an old shrine on “Gun Island” in the Sundarbans. He will meet a whole new suite of people: primarily Praya - a naturalist researching dolphins and her foster family, with son Tipu.
Travelling to the island he will meet Ravi the grandson of the last keeper of the shrine – and its oral tales. Deen will believe that the building is 17th century and links the story of the “Gun master” who founded it to other Bengali story cycles. As the novel develops he will try to track his history as a slave trafficked to the Mediterranean. Behind this is the belief that the shrine was established to Manassa Devi to appease a series of disasters the Gun master faced when he would not take her (and her warnings) seriously. Her sign is the snake – or possibly spiders. Dreams and visions that will follow for characters in the modern story will resonate to this. Carry two things through the story line: history is not about the past, it is imbedded in the present. Second: humans are supposed to be different from animals in their capacity to tell stories, but they would once have closely interrelated with creatures of the natural world – possibly through dreams, intuitions and even pre-cognition.
In the main story – Deen returns to the US where he is suffering “strange symptoms”, he plans to travel to meet old friend Cinta who will help him research the possibility of the “Gunsmith” reaching Venice – her home city. In Venice he will meet up with Rafi who has travelled down the “refugee line”. Tipu, previously with him, is missing. Cinta’s daughter is a documentary filmmaker and all will gather – as the story approaches its finale - in an attempt to meet the “blue boat” which is carrying immigrants to Italy amidst a huge political storm.
So why read this novel? Ghosh writes from a Bengali perspective with vivid depictions of place – and as in this novel with an awareness of history. But he obviously sees now as a time of great change – maybe serious crisis. This is causing political and economic instability that seemingly nobody knows how to resolve. But behind this are the broad and deep international links that have been built over the centuries and the cross pressures that will ripple out from this. Is the damage irreversible on either the personal, or the greater, scale? Do we and the planet have the capacity to put things right?
To meld all these ideas (and others too) in a single novel is not an easy ask. I would suggest that Ghosh has not been entirely successful. He is a wonderful and creative storyteller, but occasionally the extent of the information around an issue he is trying to present seems unbalanced (or presented in a conversation in a not totally believable way). For me, too, was the challenge of the mind having to cope with quiet and descriptive passages and then make the leap to “issues” – albeit important ones often carrying new and interesting information. Was I satisfied with the ending? No. But I would recommend this for reading nonetheless as you might appreciate in an entirely other way.

Dinanath Datta, known to everyone as Deen, is a rootless antiquarian bookseller living out his life partly in India and partly in the United States while finding less and less certainty in his 50s and wondering what it is all about. By accident, or maybe by design, he finds out about the legend of the Gun Merchant and then the tale of Bonduki Sadagar; about a shrine in the Sundarbans and a deity, Manasa Devi, who is the goddess of snakes. If that sounds complicated, it is, and that is how this story works, drawing the reader in to exploring the legend and then finding its modern ramifications with perhaps a bit of magic thrown in.

Deen slips into the story through not being really driven to do something else. At one time it is a woman and, at another, helping out a relative which draws him in, while the story diverts to include dolphin mass beachings, the consequences of climate change and ultimately the flood of migrants from Bangladesh towards Europe. Everything is connected. He visits the shrine in the Sundarbans which is an indeterminate swampy region bounded by Bangladesh and India and subject to frequent cyclones. There is a strange experience there and he meets two young men and the beginnings of the unfolding of the story about the Gun Merchant who, of course, is not actually selling guns!

That's how this story works. It slips from place to place and some of the places, like the Sundarbans, are marginal and indeterminate. The legends and the stories intersect with real life in odd ways. Deen finds himself in Venice looking for the boys and is drawn into another damp marginal world pursued by snakes and spiders and by the myth of Bonduki Sadagar. At the same time, the natural world seems to be falling apart damaged by industrialisation and climatic change.

This brings the story up-to-date with migrant boats trying to reach Europe, right-wing opposition and the exploitation of the migrants by organised crime traffickers. Deen finds himself aboard one of the boats trying to save the people on a 'blue boat' of refugees headed for Italy and the ending of the book blends magic, the myths and contemporary politics. For Deen, this long voyage has been a voyage of self-discovery and at the end there is the possibility of new relationships and a new, more settled, life in Oregon.

Amitav Ghosh is a great storyteller and this rambling yarn with its constant diversions and intermingled themes keeps you wondering even if, sometimes, a little confused. He brings a range of characters to life without it ever seeming contrived and while the book lives on the edge there's always a sense of reality behind it all. It's a cracking read which comes down hard on how the modern world ignores some obvious truths.

Rich, loud, noisy and bold. This is a brave and beautifully written novel. The characters jump off the page. The attention to detail in each location means you can almost see, taste and touch everything. Anything involving magic, folklore and legends will always hook me in. I enjoy the noisy exuberance of this book. Highly recommend.

A very unusual book and I couldn't quite make up my mind. Very well written, with a great number of cultural references. In some ways the book contains too much information and too may references which does not make for an easy read. On the other hand if you are interested in marine life, the ecology of the Sundarbans , folklore, people smuggling and Venice you will find it a stimulating read. I felt it was a bit too wide in scope and didn't quite pull everything together. There were too many events that could or could not have been supernatural that I found myself getting frustrated and a little bored. Altogether a challenging book in many ways, but one that I enjoyed to a certain degree

Thanks to NetGalley and John Murray for an ARC of this book.

I really enjoyed this book. As a librarian, the main character's profession as a rare books dealer obviously struck a chord, but I also loved the way folklore and fantastical elements were weaved into the narrative to highlight current issues such as the refugee crisis and climate change. I thought the refugee crisis in particular was dealt with very sensitively. I haven't previously read any of Ghosh's work but if this is anything to go by, I need to pick up his back catalogue!

I do like this author and enjoyed this juxtaposition of an historical intrigue, environmental issues and today's refugee crisis. You wouldn't expect these to come together, least of all with an antiquarian bookseller at the heart of the story but the author pulls this off with aplomb.

A book about stories passed down through the ages, this was a very detailed, complicated story which highlighted the issues of climate change and refugees/migration. I enjoyed the story up to a certain point but felt it had too much detail in it and too much history for my taste. The characters were interesting and their lives were fascinating to follow but I felt the story stopped a bit suddenly at the end.

Amitav Ghosh has written nine novels, as well as several non-fiction books, but so far my experience of his work has been confined to Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire, three novels known as the Ibis Trilogy, which are set in China and India during the First Opium War of 1839-1842. I loved those books, so even though his new one, Gun Island, sounded completely different, I was still looking forward to reading it.

Unlike the Ibis Trilogy, Gun Island is set entirely in the modern day. Our narrator, Dinanath Datta – known as Deen – has been leading a quiet, uneventful life in Brooklyn as a dealer of rare books. In fact, sometimes it is too quiet and uneventful. Approaching his sixties and feeling very alone in the world, Deen visits Bengal, the place of his birth, in the hope of meeting someone special with whom to share the rest of his life. Instead, he meets a distant relative who tells him the story of the Gun Merchant, a legendary figure who had dramatic adventures at sea while fleeing the wrath of the snake goddess Manasa Devi, before taking refuge on the island of Bonduk-dwip or ‘Gun Island’, a land free of serpents.

As Deen digs deeper into the legend and embarks on a journey to one of the historical sites associated with the story, he enlists the help of his friends Piya, a Bengali-American teacher, and Cinta, an Italian academic. But it is not until he gets to know two young men – Tipu and Rafi, who help him to see the world from another perspective – that Deen finally begins to unravel the riddles of the Gun Merchant.

The first half of the novel, set in India and America, is fascinating; I particularly enjoyed Deen’s visit to the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans. Although I found the pace quite slow, I loved the exploration of the Gun Merchant legend and what its true meaning may have been. Amitav Ghosh is obviously an author who likes to play with words and language, something which is more prominent in Sea of Poppies and its sequels but is apparent in this book too. We – and Deen – soon discover that some of the names of places and people mentioned in the legend could mean something entirely different than they initially seemed to.

Two other themes play an important part in the novel and both are hugely relevant to modern life: climate change and migration. These are introduced into the story gradually at first, as Deen’s friends share their theories of how increasing temperatures and rising water levels are leading to the movement of both wildlife and people. In the second half of the book, however, after the action switches to Venice and begins to focus on the stories of migrants who have made the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean from Libya, the story seems to lose its way. Ghosh clearly feels passionate about these issues, but the way he incorporates them into the novel is a bit too heavy-handed and at times I felt as though I was reading a long essay or an article in The Guardian instead of a work of fiction. I think part of the problem is that we see everything from Deen’s perspective and, for most of the book, he is a passive onlooker, listening to accounts of other people’s experiences rather than experiencing things for himself.

Gun Island is an interesting read but the balance between the story and the message isn’t quite right. There are also far too many coincidences, with Deen meeting people by chance whom he had previously met on the other side of the world. As I did enjoy those other books by Amitav Ghosh, I would be happy to try more of his work, but this particular novel just wasn’t for me.

"You mustn't underestimate the power of stories. There is something in them that is elemental and inexplicable".

This, said by Cinta in Gun Island, is a good place to start with a review of this wonderful story. Part legend, part allegory, it takes us to faraway lands and times. We follow the journey of Bonduki Sadagar, aka, The Gun Merchant. We move from Bangladesh, to Venice in our protagonists attempt to make sense of the tale he has learnt about. Deen is a rare bookseller and it is interesting how he finds himself reassessing how he has lived his life:
'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?'

It seems that following in the footsteps of The Gun Merchant, allows Deen to truly live, to reconnect with other humans on their journeys. To love again.

But Gun Island, though mystical and magical, also struck a chord on a humanitarian level. The Blue boat, containing refugees bound for Sicily "has become a symbol of everything that's going wrong with the world - inequality, climate change, capitalism, corruption, the arms trade, the oil industry".

And also a commentary on how we somehow sleepwalk through our lives, becoming immune to tragedy:

"The world of today presents all the symbols of demonic possession. 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".

Gun Island is wonderfully written, beautifully evocative and descriptive; it's a story that makes you think and just possibly believe in miracles.

Gun Island is part adventure story, part mythology, part social analysis and partly a personal witness to environmental crisis. In it we take a look at a number of weighty subjects; the power of story and mythology but mainly migrant refugees and mankind's detrimental impact on the our planet. Deen is our, rather, unwitting narrator who globe trots around the world experiencing all of this firsthand from America to India and Venice. Deen is Bengali by birth but lives in New York selling rare books. This is where I expected the story to take us - hunting down the details of the mythical story of the gun merchant. But, this is the just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of miles and a great many personal stories to be harvested by Deen as he travels the world. These stories feed into the gun merchant tale, loosely, as he discovers far more about modern day issues than he could have anticipated. The gun merchant is really just the beginning.

A book filled with empathy, deep insight into topics that will remain with us for generations and the power of our own personal stories, Gun Island will take you places you least expect in a richly told, deeply felt way.

This is a wonderful, wonder-filled novel. A story about stories and their power to enchant, guide, delight and ultimately transform us all. I can't remember the last time I read a novel and wanted to whoop with joy as all the strands came together. This is a big, raucous rollercoaster of an adventure story, with an unlikely bookish hero.

While on a trip home to India, a rare books dealer finds himself in the unlikely position of retracing the steps of a character from legend. Known as the Gun Merchant, this 17th century explorer found his fate inextricably intertwined with that of a Goddess of snakes and now - without risking any spoilers - it seems the same thing is happening to Deen, our bookseller. This madcap, rollicking adventure takes us from New York, to India and Bangladesh, and LA to Italy, and plenty of other places in between. Each one is beautifully evoked, which helps us hang on to reality as a lot of very strange coincidences start taking over, propelling our book dealer into great and greater danger.

It's the sort of story you are delighted to rush back to just to see what's happened next. But this is also the least of the pleasures on offer. I loved the prose, the obvious joy and effort that had gone in to choosing just the right word and if this word didn't happen to be in English, the deftness of explaining its impact. Not an easy thing to pull off between two languages and yet I've lost count of how many languages Mr Ghosh is bringing to life for us.

At its heart Deen's quest is a vehicle for shining a light on the biggest issues facing us today. As the characters grapple with the impact of climate change and migration in their lives, and against the backdrop of the legends they are chasing, we cannot help but ask ourselves what part we are playing in this unfolding story.

It's like reading a learned, beautifully crafted and politically challenging version of Indiana Jones.

With thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for allowing me to see an advance copy.

Interesting read. The plot takes itstime to get going, it has an interesting set of chatacters which I think were well developed. An easy and quick read which has depth to it.

This book has left me feeling a little short-changed. On the face of it, it contains most of the elements that I look for in a novel with the addition of present-day global themes (climate change, the refugee crisis) which happen to interest me immensely. However, I would have preferred the author to have produced two works.
First, a short, non-fiction book arguing his strongly felt views on climate change and the refugee crisis, linking the two and possibly with a greater consideration of globalisation issues than he includes in “Gun Island”.
Second, I’d like the novel I thought I was going to read, a post-colonial novel of self-discovery featuring a somewhat rootless protagonist. Old folk tales, fantasy, wonderful considerations of the nature and character of place, and a weaving together of the links between places, people, the past and the present are all in this book. I just feel that the author’s socio-political agenda gets slightly in the way of developing some of the characters of the people in the novel and detracts from the flow of the narrative.
With many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this very interesting, beautifully written novel in exchange for this honest review.