Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India. He studied at the universities of Delhi and Oxford, has taught at a number of institutions and written for many magazines. River of Smoke is the second in the Ibis trilogy, the first of which, the bestselling Sea of Poppies, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008. |
RIVER OF SMOKE
BOOK 2 OF THE IBIS TRILOGY
The Ibis is in the grip of a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal; among the dozens flailing for survival are Neel, the pampered raja who has been convicted of embezzlement; Paulette, the French orphan masquerading as a deck hand; and Deeti, the widowed poppy grower fleeing her homeland with her lover, Kalua. The storm also threatens the clipper ship Anahita, groaning with the largest consignment of opium ever to leave India for Canton. And the Redruth, a nursery ship, carries “Fitcher” Penrose, a horticulturist determined to track down the priceless treasures of China: plants that have the power to heal, or beautify, or intoxicate. All will converge in Canton’s Fanqui-Town, or Foreign Enclave: a tumultuous world unto itself where civilizations clash and sometimes fuse. It is a powder keg awaiting a spark to ignite the Opium Wars.
Spectacular coincidences, startling reversals of fortune, and tender love stories abound. But this is much more than an irresistible page-turner. The blind quest for money, the primacy of the drug trade, the concealment of base impulses behind the rhetoric of freedom: in River of Smoke the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries meet, and the result is a consuming historical novel with powerful contemporary resonance.
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India. He studied at the universities of Delhi and Oxford, has taught at a number of institutions and written for many magazines. River of Smoke is the second in the Ibis trilogy, the first of which, the bestselling Sea of Poppies, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008.
