just read amitav ghosh's 'calcutta chromosome'. is it pretentious gassing or is there anything to it?

feb 6th, 2012 CE

i think ghosh's 'the shadow lines' is quite simply the best indo-anglian work of the last 25 years.

but i have been disappointed by his later work. for instance, glass palaces had such cardboard characters (although its history is quite good and intriguing).

calcutta chromosome i found to be excruciatingly colonial: sort of a white guy's view of them 'natives' and their strange ways, with a lot of half-baked occult stuff and strange biological science thrown in. i also found the voice of the american l. murugan utterly annoying. all in all, a distinctly crummy book.

anybody have a different opinion?