EAN: 9781529349252

SMOKE AND ASHES - AMITAV GHOSH KARTONIERT (TB)

'An acerbic  compelling and always accessible account of how opium corrupted the world' TLS
'The writing is sublime  the research thorough  the eye for story superb' Sunday Telegraph When
Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis Trilogy  he was
startled to find how the lives of the 19th century sailors and soldiers he wrote of were
dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean  but also by the precious commodity
carried in enormous quantities on those currents: opium. Most surprising of all  however  was
the discovery that his own identity and family history was swept up in the story. Smoke and
Ashes is at once a travelogue  memoir and a history  drawing on decades of archival research.
In it  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 and redress their great trade imbalance  and its revenues were
essential to the Empire's financial survival. Yet tracing the profits further  Ghosh finds
opium at the origins of some of the world's biggest corporations  of America's most powerful
families and prestigious institutions (from the Astors and Coolidges to the Ivy League)  and of
contemporary globalism itself. Moving deftly between horticultural histories  the mythologies
of capitalism  and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism  in Smoke and Ashes
Amitav Ghosh reveals the role that one small plant had in making our world  now teetering on
the edge of catastrophe.

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