There are references to earlier disasters such as the Bengal famine of 1942 (79), and the cyclone t (...) history or anthropology cannot give you the emotion, it cannot give you the affect, it cannot give you what individual characters feel as they experience history. So this is why I write novels, because I think novels can synthesize geology, history, personal relationships, emotion, everything. (Ghosh, ”Interview” 103) Kanai explains to Piya how some government and environmental groups try to protect the environment at the expense of the people who live there. Such groups fail to take into account—or care—about the potential human cost of ecological preservation efforts. When Piya and Kanai discuss their experience of encountering a village mob torturing and burning a captured tiger that killed two people, Kanai encourages Piya to consider both the reasons why the villagers would want to do so, as well as the ways in which even Seattle-based Piya is complicit in creating the environment where torturing a tiger can even happen. Kanai points out that in the Sundarbans as a whole, tigers kill multiple people every week—so many, he suggests, that if people were to be killed in such numbers elsewhere, it would be deemed genocide. However, because the residents of the Sundarbans are "the poorest of the poor," the killings aren't reported. He suggests that the government and environmental groups alike care more for the tigers than they do for the tigers' human victims, if only because the victims are so poor—while there's money and political favor to be had in promoting conservation efforts. Amitav Ghosh is such a fascinating and seductive writer… I cannot think of another contemporary writer with whom it would be this thrilling to go so far, so fast' The Times

A great swirl of political, social, and environmental issues, presented through a story that’s full of romance, suspense, and poetry.”— The Washington Post In other chapters, Kanai relives an earlier period when, having been suspended from school, he was sent to Lusibari to contemplate his misdeeds and prepare himself for reentry into the educational system. He remembers his first meeting with a strong-willed teenager named Kusum, with whom he was halfway in love. At a performance honoring Bon Bibi, the legendary protectress of the island people, Kusum had told Kanai about watching her father being dragged off by a tiger and her own sense of betrayal when Bon Bibi ignored her calls for help. After the play, Kanai saw Kusum being spirited away so that she would be safe from the villainous man who sold her mother into prostitution and had been pursuing the daughter ever since. Kanai never saw Kusum again. However, during this visit he learns about her later life, which ended in martyrdom at Morichjhapi. Kusum, as it turns out, is Fokir’s mother. From the national bestselling author of Gun Island, The Hungry Tide was a winner of the Crossword Book Prize and a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize.

FROM REVERENCE TO DESTRUCTION: AN ECO-CRITICAL APPROACH TO AMITAV GHOSH'S 'THE HUNGRY TIDE'

Although Piya has abandoned emotional language for the pure, objective discourse of science, Kanai senses that they share a wavelength. He observes her raking the surface of the water with her binoculars "like a textual scholar: it was as though she were puzzling over a codex that had been authored by the earth itself". Both characters, one devoted to penetrating the secrets of nature, the other occupied with venturing deep into the interior of other languages, find themselves adrift on a tide of shifting tongues. The archipelago of the Sundarbans is India's doormat, settled and resettled by every wave of migrants, and as the waters are neither wholly fresh nor salt, they are awash with many linguistic currents: "Bengali, English, Arabic, Hindi, Arakanese and who knows what else? ... they create a proliferation of small worlds." Chapters from the journal are inserted periodically into the narrative. From the journal, we learn the story of the violent confrontations in Morichjhampi – a real incident that occurred in 1979 involving government forces and Bengali refugees. The journal also includes the story of Bon Bibi, the protectress of the island people.

Another reason for concern is the expanding tourism industry in India. Sahara India Parivar's mega tourism project proposes to take over large areas of the Sundarbans to construct floatels, restaurants, shops, business centres, cinemas, and theatres which would disturb the fragile ecosystem and further threaten the already endangered biodiversity of the region. Ghosh vehemently oppose this gigantic hotel project in the name of conservation.

Also, there is a subplot or an underlying narrative which takes readers into the past, centring around the 1978-79 Morichjhanpi Massacre in the Sundarbans. The subplot unfolds as Kanai finds the diary of his uncle. The role of Kanai’s uncle and his diary hold significant importance in “The Hungry Tide” by Amitav Ghosh. Kanai Dutt’s uncle, Nirmal, plays a pivotal posthumous role in the narrative, and his diary becomes a powerful link to the past, unveiling the region’s history and shedding light on the intertwined destinies of the characters. The characters are another story, though. Kanai, a businessman who is practical, faces issues with his practicality when he comes face to face with realities of the tide country. Piya, who was born Indian but is strictly American, find an unknown bond developing with her lost land. Nirmal, a revolutionary who lost his life, leaves such a story for Kanai that he drown in it. Characters of The Hungry Tide will leave you in awe, you will simply fall in love with them.