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Smoke and Ashes: Wyndham and Banerjee Book 3 (Wyndham and Banerjee series)

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If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Smoke and Ashes is at once a travelogue, a memoir and an excursion into history, both economic and cultural. Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India and China, as well as on the world at large. Engineered by the British Empire, which exported opium from India to sell in China, the trade and its revenues were essential to the Empire’s survival. Upon deeper exploration, Ghosh finds opium at the origins of some of the world’s biggest corporations, several of America’s most powerful families and institutions, and contemporary globalism itself. In India the long-term consequences were even more profound.

This story is remarkable, and revelatory, because at the heart of it lies a plant—the opium poppy. While many other plants, like sugarcane, tobacco and cotton, have played major roles in history, their importance has faded over time. The opium poppy, on the other hand, has gone from strength to strength; it is now more powerful than ever, manifesting itself in the devastating opioid crises that currently grip the globe. Smoke and Ashes tells the story of how this common and deceptively humble plant has shaped the modern world, and the key part it is now playing in the unmaking of that world. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Responding to Mr. Krishna, who asked him about the impact opium production and trade had over the years, Mr. Ghosh said that many economic historians had noted that the huge disparity in social indicators in districts that were producing opium and those that were not, lasts to this day. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. Udayan Mitra, Executive Publisher, HarperCollins India, says, “ Smoke and Ashes simply took my breath away. Like so many readers around the world, I have read and admired everything Amitav Ghosh has ever published—but Smoke and Ashes is one of those books that left an impact at a very intrinsic level. Here Amitav recounts the fascinating journey—into economic, social and cultural history—he undertook as he researched and then wrote the Ibis Trilogy, and tells us how the discoveries that he made influenced him, both as an individual and as a writer. As he peels layer after layer off perceptions and understandings of Indian and Chinese history, trade patterns and cultural imperatives, our view of the past that has shaped the world we inhabit today expands progressively, and gains a deeper, sharper focus. At the heart of Smoke and Ashes is the incredible story of the opium poppy and its defining role in the making and unmaking of the modern world: it is a hidden history that invites deep reflection.When Amitav Ghosh began his research for the Ibis Trilogy some twenty years ago, he was startled to find how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote of were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean, but also by a precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those currents: opium. Most surprising of all was the discovery that his own identity and family history were swept up in the story. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial?

Amitav Ghosh’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He has been awarded and felicitated across the world. In 2019 Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the past decade. The same year, the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honour, was conferred on him: he was the first English-language writer to receive it. But Wyndham finds himself in a tight spot when he stumbles across a corpse in an opium den. When he then comes across a second body bearing the same injuries, Wyndham is convinced that there's a deranged killer on the loose. As Wyndham and Sergeant 'Surrender-not' Banerjee set out to solve the two murders, Wyndham must tread carefully, keeping his personal demons secret, before someone else turns up dead... The book is also a very personal look at Amitav Ghosh’s own engagement with opium’s hidden histories – this is at one level a writer’s memoir, with deep insights into the process of writing the Ibis Trilogy.

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India, 1921. Captain Sam Wyndham is battling a serious addiction to opium that he must keep secret from his superiors in the Calcutta police force. Once he started researching the subject of his Ibis trilogy — opium, Author Amitav Ghosh said that he realised the power certain myths acquire in silencing history. Opium is such an important part of our economic history, but has almost been erased from our understanding of the world. It has left permanent marks on eastern and western India, in a very significant sense,” the author said on Thursday at the launch of his new book Smoke and Ashes: A writer’s journey through Opium’s hidden histories. He was in conversation with singer and activist T.M. Krishna. AMITAV GHOSH was born in Calcutta, and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; he studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria. He is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction including The Shadow Lines, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, the Ibis Trilogy (comprising the novels Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire), Gun Island, The Great Derangement, The Nutmeg’s Curse, Jungle Nama and The Living Mountain. Smoke and Ashes is the story of how, under the aegis of the British Empire, India became the world’s largest producer of opium between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the different conditions under which opium was produced in various regions, with lasting effects for those areas. It also traces the transformative impact that the opium trade had on India, China, Britain and the United States, with profound long-term consequences for the birth of the modern world, and of contemporary globalism. Many of the world’s biggest corporations got their start in the colonial opium trade. But the opium economy also had significant effects at the microlevel, influencing migration and settlement patterns, and touching upon millions of lives, including those of my own forefathers.

Smoke and Ashes is one of the most powerful, thought-provoking works of non-fiction I have read in some time. We at HarperCollins India are privileged to be the first publisher to bring this exceptional book to readers, before its publication elsewhere across the world. I can hardly wait for booklovers everywhere to read and respond to what is most certainly, for me, the non-fiction book of the year.”Speaking about how the Opium Department operated in India under the British, as a “bureaucracy within a bureaucracy”, Mr Ghosh called the Purvanchal region, where much of the opium was produced, as a “kingdom within an empire” . Described as a “travelogue, memoir, and an excursion into history”, the book traces the effect the opium trade had on Britain, India and China. In India, the book examines the impact this had particularly on Kolkata and Mumbai. Ghosh, however, is careful to assure us that his vision of the future isn’t all doom and gloom. In fact, he is certain that this tragic history is a rallying cry for the climate activists of today. For one, it shows us that plants can have agency too, more powerful than we can comprehend. And, of course, it serves as a reminder that throughout history, even in the darkest of times, humanity has banded together to make amazing change for the better. “In the late 19th century, a huge anti-opium movement came together internationally and they were able to impose certain constraints on these massive European empires, which were actually more powerful than energy corporations are today,” he shares. “I think we can take some hope from that. That’s ultimately what being human is about—to recognise that you have a duty to keep on trying.” Also read: Opium trade did not just influence various aspects of commercial and economic life, but also patterns of demography. Large number of people from the trading community from western India began to settle in Kolkata. The commercial character of Mumbai came from the nature of opium relations in that part of the country as did the very colonial character of Kolkata,” he said. An ambitious new book that explores the immense effect the opium trade has had on world history and how opium continues to impact our lives today.

Amitav Ghosh says, “My new book, Smoke and Ashes: A Writer’s Journey Through Opium’s Hidden Histories, is based on the enormous quantities of material I accumulated while researching the trilogy of novels I wrote between 2005 and 2015. When I started writing the novels I thought they would be mainly about the transportation of indentured workers from India to Mauritius in the early nineteenth century. But in the course of my research, and much to my surprise, I stumbled upon a different trade in a precious commodity that was being carried in large quantities from India to China—opium! HarperCollins India will be the first to publish Smoke and Ashes, in July, which is only appropriate because their editorial teams have given me huge and whole-hearted support throughout the writing of the book. I am very excited about the publication of the book!” Smoke and Ashes is at once a travelogue, a memoir and an excursion into history, both economic and cultural. Smoke and Ashes is Abir Mukherjee's best book yet; a brilliantly conceived murder mystery set amidst political and social turmoil - beautifully crafted' C.J. SansomAll I’m trying to do is write about the world as I see it”: Amitav Ghosh on his new book, his inspirations and his hopes for the future of literature Moving deftly between horticultural histories, the mythologies of capitalism and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism, Smoke and Ashes reveals the pivotal role one small plant has played in the making of the world as we know—a world that is now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.

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