Indian writer Amitav Ghosh’s new novel, Smoke and Ashes, traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India, China and America, as well as on the world at large. (Photo: Twitter) ...

Amitav Ghosh doesn’t mince words, especially when writing of British imperialism in India, the land of his birth, or of Britain’s role in China, the land of his moral obsessions. In “Smoke and ...

New York; March 8, 2024 — Last week, award-winning author Amitav Ghosh sat down with Princeton professor and former BBC journalist Razia Iqbal for a conversation about his latest book, Smoke and Ashes ...

It takes some daring to choose opium as your historical protagonist. The milky sap of the poppy flower has taken so many forms across so many centuries that its allure feels like a trap, a chasing of ...

“A scintillating and kaleidoscopic vision of opium’s role in the past several centuries of global history . . . Exquisitely written and packed with astonishing insight, this is a must-read.” — ...

Smoke and Ashes, by Amitav Ghosh (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). A hybrid of horticultural and economic history, this book proposes that the opium poppy should be taken as “a historical force in its own ...

The problem began with a flower, a delicate blossom with a slender stalk. It was a fragile-looking plant, with petals as fine as tissue paper, yet it proved to be a formidable opponent. As the ...

Long before the Sackler family gained a fortune -- and later, infamy -- by creatively marketing new synthetic opioids and helping to spark the current wave of opioid addiction, other American fortunes ...

After the mid-18th century, when the British East India Co. was importing tea from China, few could have guessed that the industry would be revolutionized by a different plant: the opium poppy. Over ...