The Hungry Tide

Off the easternmost coast of India, in the Bay of Bengal, lies the immense labyrinth of tiny islands known as the Sundarbans. For settlers here, life is extremely precarious. Attacks by deadly tigers are common. Unrest and eviction are constant threats. Without warning, at any time, tidal floods rise and surge over the land, leaving devastation in their wake. In this place of vengeful beauty, the lives of three people from different worlds collide.

The main character, Piyali Roy, is a young marine biologist, of Bengali-Indian descent but stubbornly American. She was raised in Seattle and studies in the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla. She travels to the Sundarbans in search of a rare, endangered river dolphin, Orcaella brevirostris. She meets Kanai, a translator and businessman, on the Kolkata Suburban Railway heading towards Port Canning, on her way to the Sundarbans. After arriving in the Sundarbans, she hires a boat to look for dolphins, but her journey begins with a disaster, when she is thrown from a boat into crocodile-infested waters. Rescue comes in the form of a young, illiterate fisherman, Fokir. Although they have no language between them, Piya and Fokir are powerfully drawn to each other, sharing an uncanny instinct for the ways of the sea. Piya engages Fokir to help with her research and finds a translator in Kanai Dutt, a businessman from Delhi whose idealistic aunt and uncle are longtime settlers in the Sundarbans.

The Morichjhanpi massacre of 1978-79, when government of West Bengal forcibly evicted thousands of Bengali refugees who had settled on the island, forms a background for some parts of the novel. The novel explores topics like humanism and environmentalism, especially when they come into a conflict of interest with each other.

The novel won the 2004 Crossword Book Prize and was among the final nominees for the 2006 Kiriyama Prize.[1]

• Canning, South 24 Parganas
• Gosaba
• Tiger attacks in the Sundarbans

• Review of the novel by Supriya Chaudhuri