RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewGhosh’s tentacular history also embraces opium’s entanglement with furniture, architecture, gardens and its role in modern wars. His forensic analysis of opium-factory paintings is particularly fascinating. But it’s Ghosh’s big-picture thinking that has made his nonfiction so influential ... [A] huge achievement.
Amitav Ghosh
RaveSydney Review of Books (AUS)... characteristic gracefulness ... The main work of The Nutmeg’s Curse is to make visible the long and programmatic history of racial violence at the heart of colonialism as a ‘warfare of a distinctive kind\' ... (It’s a shame in a book of such ambitious scope that its references to Australia—where many historians have been writing so astringently in partnership with Indigenous people about the ongoing violence of colonisation, and where Acknowledgement of Country is made routinely at most public events—are perfunctory and, when they do occur, less sure-footed.) Nevertheless, The Nutmeg’s Curse is often dazzling in its synthesis, particularly when linking past to present ... Ghosh’s book is most galvanising when he turns his attention to the Indian Ocean basin as the centre of the Anglosphere’s continuing patterns of exploitation.
