The History comes alive again, as Amitava Ghosh revives his penning act in bringing the opium war in the Chinese territory straight to your desk, through “River of Smoke”

Over the last two decades, Amitava Ghosh has established himself as a writer of uncommon talent who combines literary flair with a rare seriousness of purpose. It saw Ghosh painting upon a much larger canvas than ever before, with a multitude of characters and an epic vision; and the novel was his first to be short listed for the Man Booker Prize. Though he did not win, the anticipation surrounding the second of the trilogy has remained high. “River of Smoke” does not disappoint. Sea of Poppies ended amidst a raging storm, rocking the triple-massed schooner, the Ibis, and its colorful array of seamen, convicts and laborers sailing forth in the course of transforming their lives. In September 1838 a storm blows up on the Indian Ocean and the Ibis, a ship carrying a consignment of convicts and indentured laborers from Calcutta to Mauritius, is caught up in the whirlwind. When the seas settle, five men have disappeared-two lascars, two convicts and one of the passengers. On the grand scale of an historical epic, River of Smoke follows its storm-tossed characters to the crowded harbors of China. There, despite efforts of the emperor to stop them, ships from Europe and India exchange their cargoes of opium for boxes of tea, silk, porcelain and silver. Among them are Bahram Modi, a wealthy Parsi opium merchant out of Bombay, his estranged half-Chinese son Ah Fatt, the orphaned amateur botanist Paulette and a motley collection of others in pursuit of romance, riches and a legendary rare flower. All struggle to cope with their losses-and, for some, unimaginable freedoms—in the alleys and crowded waterways of nineteenth-century Canton. Of all the evils done under the guise of "Free Trade," some of the most insidious were those carried out by the unofficial mercantile arm of the British Empire, The East India Tea Company yet it wasn't just the Chinese affected by this practice, but those in the British colonies of India and its neighbours - what is now Afghanistan, for example - where the poppies from which opium is made were grown who suffered, and still suffer today, from the repercussions of this trade. It’s the history resurfaces at you, and RightBooks.in through the link www.rightbooks.in/product_details.asp?pid=9780670082155&River%20Of%20Smoke catalyzes that bringing.