Ghosh’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.
Sweeping ... Ghosh’s impressive history of the opium industry is an attempt to acknowledge 'the historical agency of botanical matter' ... Forceful, even thundering prose.
Ghosh, among the finest novelists of Indian origin writing in the English language, is a social anthropologist by training ... His narrative ranges beyond straightforward imperial history and veers into critiques of modern capitalism, climate change and 'structural racism' ... Ghosh is enlightening on the much-neglected story of America’s hand in the opium trade.
