A profound and absorbing saga from the Internationally Bestselling and Man Booker Prize
shortlisted author 'Amitav Ghosh is such a fascinating and seductive writer... I cannot think
of another contemporary writer with whom it would be this thrilling to go so far so fast' The
Times January 2001: A small ship led by wealthy Scotsman Daniel Hamilton arrives in the
Sundarbans a vast archipelago of islands in the mythical river Ganges a half-drowned land
where the waters of the Himalayas merge with the incoming tides of the sea. In the Sundarbans
the tides reach more than 100 miles inland and every day thousands of hectares of forest
disappear only to re-emerge hours later. Dense as the mangrove forests are from Hamilton's
point of view it is only a little less barren than a desert. The eccentric Scotsman and the
scientists on board the ship disembark to study this little-known environment and to trace the
journeys of the descendants of this society. Their goal? To create a utopian society of all
races and religions and conquer the might of the Sundarbans.
