Critical Analysis of Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines

Pages:163-167
Sarika More and Ghazala Anjum (Department of English, CMJ University, Shillong)

The Shadow Lines is, by common consent, Ghosh’s Best work. It is a story that arises out of the narrator’s reminiscences, recollected in tranquility and looked at ith all the wisdom of the hind sight. It is abut essentialization as a process, and its questioning in various ways. The novel covers a large span of period; it tells the story of the three generations of the narrator’s family spread over Dhaka, Calcutta and London. Chronologically, the story begins with passage about the time in colonial India when the narrator was not even born. In the first section of the book titled ‘Going Away’, Ghosh recaptures London on the eve of, and during the War. This knowledge of War was gained by the adolescent story-teller not from books but from the experiences of his uncle who exercised an indelible impression on him. This uncle tells him the stories which give him the words to travel in and eyes to see with. In the section ‘Coming Home’, Ghosh shifts his focus to the Indian subcontinent, mainly to Calcutta and Dhaka where he tries to find the meaning of political freedom.