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

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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. 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. Just listening for the 784,654th time....and it's just perfect in every way. Just incredible. The only reason it was remade was to scoop up a boatload of money from a more modern and accepting audience. But it is a completely different song than the other one that sounds slapped together in a few takes without a thought for the meaning. 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.

Curated markets data, exclusive trading recommendations, Independent equity analysis & actionable investment ideas 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. Smoke and Ashes is Abir Mukherjee's best book yet; a brilliantly conceived murder mystery set amidst political and social turmoil – beautifully crafted. CJ Sansom It is the flamboyant evocation of 1920s Calcutta that makes this such a mesmerising read. The Guardian When Sam is summoned to investigate a grisly murder, he is stunned at the sight of the body: he’s seen this before. Last night, in a drug addled haze, he stumbled across a corpse with the same ritualistic injuries. It seems like there’s a deranged killer on the loose. Unfortunately for Sam, the corpse was in an opium den—and revealing his presence there could cost him his career.

Smoke and Ashes perfectly balances high suspense with its well-researched historical setting, each element masterfully supporting the other." HistoricalNovels.info 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. Sansom India, 1921. Haunted by his memories of World War I, Captain Sam Wyndham is battling a serious addiction to opium that he must keep secret from his superiors in the Calcutta police force.

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.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. Riveting. Mukherjee has a substantive grasp of colonial Indian history, and his books have the feel of a modern-day and much more progressive Kipling, full of high intrigue and derring-do, yet overlaid with the day-to-day reality of a struggle with addiction." Mystery Tribune 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 Abir Mukherjee's best book yet; a brilliantly conceived murder mystery set amidst political and social turmoil - beautifully crafted' C.J. Sansom

In Wyndham and Bannerjee, Mukherjee has created two appealing characters presenting different factions of the whole that is India, revealing what each gives up to serve king and country, and answers the question of which country each actually serves." New York Journal of Books 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 MumbaiSmoke 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. 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. 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.