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Top of the pile
80
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
67/100Critics
93/100Scholars
Author:
Amitav Ghosh
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date:
February 13, 2024
Ghosh unravels the impact of the opium trade on global history and in his own family.
What The Reviewers Say
Ghosh’s tentacular history also embraces opium’s entanglement with furniture, architecture, gardens and its role in modern wars. His forensic analysis of opium-factory paintings is particularly fascinating. But it’s Ghosh’s big-picture thinking that has made his nonfiction so influential.
Sweeping.
Ghosh, among the finest novelists of Indian origin writing in the English language, is a social anthropologist by training.
Ghosh deftly uses opium as a lens to explore Indian and Chinese history and how the trade impacted Indo-Chinese relations. While the book is a vital companion piece to the Ibis trilogy it is also a stand-alone book in its own right..
