Ghosh, Amitav - The Calcutta Chromosome
In a near-future-or past near-future, since the book was published in 1995-New York City, Antar discovers the ID card of one L. Murugan, self-proclaimed expert on Ronald Ross, the man who discovered that malaria was transmitted by mosquito. Murugan disappeared on August 21, 1995, and as Antar tries to find out what happened to him, he begins to suspect that Murugan's disappearance has something to do with his conspiracy theory that Ronald Ross was lead to his malaria discovery.
I picked this up instead of Sea of Poppies largely because I don't think my brain can handle a large cast of characters right now. Plus, malaria! Secret histories! Medical thrillers! It appeals to the part of me that read every single Michael Crichton book in middle school, devoured the Time-Life Dictionary of Medicine, and read several Scholastic books with titles like Six Medical Mysteries. Only this is even better because it touches on knowledge and scientific discovery and the politics thereof, which I have been thinking about for a while now.
The book begins rather slowly; none of the characters came alive for me until they started talking to each other, and then, I mostly found the stories they told more interesting then their own stories. But then things begin to come together and stories begin to overlap and we rush toward the conclusion.
Spoilers
I was particularly worried at first when I found both Antar and Murugan more boring than the narrative Murugan was spinning about Ross; was I privileging the story of the White men over the actual main characters? Some of it is that the characters' voices don't come out until they begin to talk: Ghosh's third-person narrative about Murugan is nowhere near as fun as hearing Murugan's over-the-top, very descriptive voice. But some, I think, is deliberate. The characters, like Ross, are tools positioned both by Ghosh and by the mysterious Mangala; they are less important as themselves and more important as vehicles to discovery and thereby vehicles to effect change. And so, Ghosh rewrites the story of the discovery of malaria by making Antar and Murugan and Sonali and Urmila the discoverers, rather than the bevy of European and American scientists who are so frequently the heroes of medical discovery.
I also love that the book is about malaria, so often portrayed in books as the disease of the tropics, the disease that White people come down with when they are tromping about the swamps and jungles of the "uncivilized" world.
I love how he overturns ideas of "civilized" and "uncivilized," "scientific" and "religious," "rational" and "irrational;" the seemingly pagan cult that beheads pigeons is actually further ahead than the scientists themselves, and the scientists who infect the locals with disease in order to further study it, who use the people around them as tools, are in fact the tools themselves.
And then he ends it perfectly, with the ends tied up, but not quite, with more of the story left untold, because the telling is the change, and in the end, we only know so much as Ghosh lets us know.
I hate saying that things "transcend genre," because this book is SF and a thriller and it never stops being in those genres. But what is extraordinary is how Ghosh uses the rush-to-the-end that I associate with thrillers not only as a narrative device, but also as a commentary on the nature of knowledge and discovery and as a means to make the reader a tool in the journey of discovery. I also love how he overturns the narrative of scientific discovery and shows it for the construct that it is. And he does this all not by transcending genre, but by staying firmly within the genre of a page-turning thriller.
Recommended both for sheer readability and for the cool ideas.
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coffeeandink's review
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I picked this up instead of Sea of Poppies largely because I don't think my brain can handle a large cast of characters right now. Plus, malaria! Secret histories! Medical thrillers! It appeals to the part of me that read every single Michael Crichton book in middle school, devoured the Time-Life Dictionary of Medicine, and read several Scholastic books with titles like Six Medical Mysteries. Only this is even better because it touches on knowledge and scientific discovery and the politics thereof, which I have been thinking about for a while now.
The book begins rather slowly; none of the characters came alive for me until they started talking to each other, and then, I mostly found the stories they told more interesting then their own stories. But then things begin to come together and stories begin to overlap and we rush toward the conclusion.
Spoilers
I was particularly worried at first when I found both Antar and Murugan more boring than the narrative Murugan was spinning about Ross; was I privileging the story of the White men over the actual main characters? Some of it is that the characters' voices don't come out until they begin to talk: Ghosh's third-person narrative about Murugan is nowhere near as fun as hearing Murugan's over-the-top, very descriptive voice. But some, I think, is deliberate. The characters, like Ross, are tools positioned both by Ghosh and by the mysterious Mangala; they are less important as themselves and more important as vehicles to discovery and thereby vehicles to effect change. And so, Ghosh rewrites the story of the discovery of malaria by making Antar and Murugan and Sonali and Urmila the discoverers, rather than the bevy of European and American scientists who are so frequently the heroes of medical discovery.
I also love that the book is about malaria, so often portrayed in books as the disease of the tropics, the disease that White people come down with when they are tromping about the swamps and jungles of the "uncivilized" world.
I love how he overturns ideas of "civilized" and "uncivilized," "scientific" and "religious," "rational" and "irrational;" the seemingly pagan cult that beheads pigeons is actually further ahead than the scientists themselves, and the scientists who infect the locals with disease in order to further study it, who use the people around them as tools, are in fact the tools themselves.
And then he ends it perfectly, with the ends tied up, but not quite, with more of the story left untold, because the telling is the change, and in the end, we only know so much as Ghosh lets us know.
I hate saying that things "transcend genre," because this book is SF and a thriller and it never stops being in those genres. But what is extraordinary is how Ghosh uses the rush-to-the-end that I associate with thrillers not only as a narrative device, but also as a commentary on the nature of knowledge and discovery and as a means to make the reader a tool in the journey of discovery. I also love how he overturns the narrative of scientific discovery and shows it for the construct that it is. And he does this all not by transcending genre, but by staying firmly within the genre of a page-turning thriller.
Recommended both for sheer readability and for the cool ideas.
Links:
-
coffeeandink's review
Comment | Read Comments (
) | Link