It is 1839 and China has embargoed the trade of opium and the British Foreign Secretary has ordered the colonial government in India to assemble an expeditionary force for an attack to reinstate the trade. Among those consigned is Kesri Singh, a soldier in the army of the East India Company, who makes his way eastward on the "Hind," a transport ship that will carry him from Bengal to Hong Kong. Along the way, many characters from the Ibis Trilogy come aboard, including Zachary Reid, a young American speculator and Shireen, the widow of an opium merchant. From Bombay to Calcutta, from naval engagements to the decks of a hospital ship, among embezzlement, and espionage, Amitav Ghosh charts a course through the culminating moment of the British opium trade and colonial history. As seen with the first two novels in the trilogy, Flood of Fire contains a verve of energy and historical vision as the conclusion to Ghosh's unprecedented reenvisioning of the nineteenth-century war on drugs.
Amitav Ghosh is the internationally bestselling author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Glass Palace and is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes. Ghosh divides his time between Kolkata and Goa, India, and Brooklyn, New York.