Sea of Poppies

On the eve of the first Opium War, the Ibis, a former slave ship refitted to carry indentured Indian laborers, prepares to sail from Calcutta to Mauritius. Aboard are Deeti, a Bihari opium-farmer's widow fleeing her husband's funeral pyre; Zachary Reid, a mixed-race American second mate passing as white; Neel Rattan Halder, a bankrupt Bengali zamindar in chains; Paulette, a French orphan in disguise; and a cast of lascars, convicts, and farm hands whose lives are being rewritten by British opium policy. Ghosh opens the Ibis Trilogy with a 500-page portrait of the 1830s subcontinent on the brink.