Book: Sea of Poppies

 

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh is another book I came across in high school. It immediately transports you to a place and time far away from our own. You'll find yourself on plantations of endless poppies (for opium production), a crewman on one of the thousands of trade vessels on the very busy Indian Ocean, and on decadent boats lazily floating down the mighty Ganges. The characters are deep, their stories riveting, and I guarantee you'll learn something about a part of the world where more than half of the world population lives today. Ghosh's book is a must read for anyone interested in accounts of eastern India (Bengal), indentured servitude, early British colonialism of India, the Geopolitics of Asia and the Indian Ocean in the early 1800's, the Sino-British relations leading up to the opium wars.