Ghosh, Amitav

"In [this book], Amitav Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India, and China, as well as the world at large. The trade was engineered by the British Empire, which exported Indian opium to sell to China to redress their great trade imbalance, and its revenues were essential to the empire's financial survival. Following the profits further, Ghosh finds opium central to the origins of some of the world's biggest corporations, of America's most powerful families and prestigious institutions . . . and of contemporary globalism itself"--Provided by publisher.

Preparing to fight China's nineteenth-century Opium Wars, a motley assortment of sailors and passengers establish family-like ties that eventually span continents, races, and generations.

Examines important world events over the past two decades such as the 2005 tsunami, the devastation and casualties at the New York Trade Centers in 2001, and the rise of religious extremism, and other related happenings.

The "Ibis," embarks on a journey from Calcutta with a diverse crew of sailors--which includes a bankrupt raja, a widowed tribeswoman, a Mulatto American freedman, and a French orphan--to the poppy fields in Ganges, to China's nineteenth-century Opium War.

Anatar, a programmer and data analyst in near future New York City, is drawn into a bizarre alternate history of medical science when he decides to investigate the disappearance of L. Murugan, a man who discovered evidence of an ongoing experiment in controlled destiny.

In the dangerous Sundarbans Islands off the coast of India, three people from different backgrounds find their worlds colliding after a young woman is saved from crocodile-infested waters by an illiterate fisherman.

A family saga set against the backdrop of Burma, India, and Malaya's nineteenth- and twentieth-century history, beginning when the British invasion of 1885 separates a poor boy named Rajkumar from his love, Dolly, a handmaiden for the royal family, which the invasion forces into exile.