Smoke and Ashes

Opium's Hidden Histories

By: Amitav Ghosh

Narrated by: Ranjit Madgavkar

Ghosh unravels the impact of the opium trade on global history and in his own family—the climax of a years long project.

When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis trilogy ten years ago, he was startled to learn how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote about were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those currents: opium. Most surprising of all, however, was the discovery that his own identity and family history were swept up in the story.

Smoke and Ashes is at once a travelogue, a memoir, and an essay in history, drawing on decades of archival research. In it, Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India, and China, as well as the world at large. The trade was engineered by the British Empire, which exported Indian opium to sell to China to redress their great trade imbalance, and its revenues were essential to the empire’s financial survival.

Tracing the profits further, Ghosh finds opium at the origins of some of the world’s biggest corporations, of America’s most powerful families and prestigious institutions (from the Astors and Coolidges to the Ivy League), and of contemporary globalism itself.

Moving deftly between horticultural histories, the mythologies of capitalism, and the repercussions of colonialism, Ghosh reveals the role that one small plant had in making our world, now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.

©2024 Amitav Ghosh (P)2024 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

A very interesting book ruined by bad narration

As with his other books, Ghosh goes into fine detail weaving multiple strands of history together to yield rich perspective of the centrality of the opium trade in the development of global commerce and culture. Some parts of the story are well known and have been told many times before (Peter Ward Fay's The Opium War 1840-1842 being but one good example). But Ghosh digs deeply into the correspondence and records of many of the more and less prominent traders, while simultaneously considering the broad scope of connections, in the vein of Mark Kurlansky's books on Cod and Salt and the like.

I would have liked to be able to enjoy the the text but unfortunately, the narrator has chosen to insert himself into the telling in a most irritating way. He seems to feel the need to dramatize and comment on the emotional content of his text, even when - particularly when - there is no need to do so. He slows down and emphasizes certain passages with slow, labored attention to each word in some passages, then speeds up and passes quickly over others, but there is no rhyme or reason to it. Letters from one person to another are particularly painful exercises in bad acting.

It got to the point that I could only listen in short bursts, sometimes no longer than a few minutes before the narration got so infuriating that I would have to stop. Again, a real shame as I generally enjoy the sweep of Ghosh's histories, as for example in his The Nutmeg's Curse.

Gripping history of opium trade

Concise and clear history of how opium was the key to the “militant church” of the British Empire.

Clarifies myths and exposes the real history of the narco-state the British set up in India.

Reader is great but there are many words he pronounces in Indian English that grated on me bcz of their unfamiliar/odd pronunciation. eg, entrepreneur, assuage, etc

a must read

fascinating history of opium and the evil of opioids. men's cruelty motivated by greed is frightening and the book provides ample proof.

Poor performance

Publishers really need to pay closer attention to (and perhaps higher fees for) performance. This is another fine book ruined by poor voice acting... over-acting, in many places.

I adored the narrator

Not sure what others are not liking. I am super fussy about narrators too.

Good pacing and emotive but not overdone at all.