Authors@Google: Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh visits Google's Seattle, WA office to discuss his book "Sea of Poppies." This event took place on November 14, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.

Turning his eye to the nineteenth-century opium trade, the acclaimed author Amitav Ghosh has crafted a novel that is by turns witty and provocative, while delivering a magnificent historical adventure. An intricate saga, Sea of Poppies brings together a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts, who have embarked on a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean in the midst of the Opium Wars between Britain and China. The events transpiring aboard the Ibis (a former slave ship) provide a rich tapestry of a time when the world stood poised to witness some of the most profound destruction-and most sweeping liberation-in the history of humanity. From the lush poppy fields of the Ganges to the crowded backstreets of Canton, across a rolling high sea that beckons throughout the narrative, this is a portrait of fateful events you will not soon forget.

AMITAV GHOSH is one of India's best-known writers. His books include The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, Incendiary Circumstances, The Hungry Tide. His most recent novel, Sea of Poppies, is the first volume of the Ibis Trilogy.

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