FLOOD OF FIRE: AMITAV GHOSH

This is the third and final book in Ghosh's spectacular IBIS TRILOGY, set mostly in India and China during the early 19th century.  In this text, we meet numerous characters from the previous books, like Zachary Reid, an American sailor, son of a slave and white man.  He heads East, ends up on the Ibis, a ship that eventually takes him and various other characters to China just before and during the Opium Wars, around 1840. Reid carries on an affair with a Mrs Burnham, the wife of Reid's eventual business partner in the opium business. We also follow Shireen, a Parsi Indian widow of a successful opium trader.  She like most widows is left penniless unless she goes to Hong Kong to stand up for her husband's business.  We also follow the life of Kesri Singh, a sepoy (soldier) in the East Indian Company, who fights in the Opium War. He seems to be the voice of the common man, neglected, used by the bigoted English who depend on the Indians but look down on them.

We also follow the machinations of both the British and Chinese, through the journals of Neel Rattan Holder, a bankrupted former Raja who becomes a friend to both sides.  From him, we see how brutalizing, racist and unforgiving was the opium trade or what the British argued was 'free trade.' Great Britain fought for the right to make profits from dependency of the Chinese on opium, somewhat reminiscent of the drug problems here in the United States. The destructiveness of the trade for both the Chinese and Indians, under the guise of religiosity and humanizing the 'other,' is disgusting and barbaric, the very worst of capitalism. I really enjoyed all three novels.