Flood of fire

by Amitav Ghosh

Hardcover, 2015

Status

Available

Publication

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.

Description

"The stunningly vibrant final novel in the bestselling Ibis Trilogy It is 1839 and China has embargoed the trade of opium, yet too much is at stake in the lucrative business 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. He 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 in opium futures, and Shireen, the widow of an opium merchant whose mysterious death in China has compelled her to seek out his lost son. The Hind docks in Hong Kong just as war breaks out and opium "pours into the market like monsoon flood." From Bombay to Calcutta, from naval engagements to the decks of a hospital ship, among embezzlement, profiteering, and espionage, Amitav Ghosh charts a breathless course through the culminating moment of the British opium trade and vexed colonial history. With all the verve of the first two novels in the trilogy, Flood of Fire completes Ghosh's unprecedented reenvisioning of the nineteenth-century war on drugs. With remarkable historic vision and a vibrant cast of characters, Ghosh brings the Opium Wars to bear on the contemporary moment with the storytelling that has charmed readers around the world"--… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member KateVane
I loved the first two books in the Ibis trilogy and there is much to admire in this one, but I have to admit that I struggled at times to get through it.

The positives first. It’s a brilliantly researched account of events leading up to the First Opium War, showing the perspectives of characters
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from around the world, in particular Britain, India and China. It gives anyone unfamiliar with events a great insight into the period and the places. It shows, in particular, the paradoxical position which the Indian participants find themselves in, invaluable to both camps, but not quite at home in either.

Characters from the earlier books find themselves on opposite sides, for entirely intelligible reasons. The author raises important questions about ethnicity, identity and the rampant march of capital, which resonate today.

Where I felt a little let down was in the storytelling. I missed the humour of the earlier books, and the inventiveness of the language as characters from different cultures and classes were thrown together. Some of the characters’ storylines felt a little soapy (particularly Zachary’s) and others, like Shireen, a bit prosaic. Other plot lines relied on coincidence.

The battle scenes were very long and the amount of detail seemed to deaden rather than enhance the drama. It also felt like the author himself might have been overwhelmed by the amount of exposition. Neel’s narration in the early stages of the book takes the form of a journal, which is very dry and limiting as he writes mainly about the political and military situation. This is abruptly abandoned part way through and the author returns to a conventional third-person narration.

It might be that the weight of expectation was too much. And I’m now familiar with the world of the trilogy that felt so vivid and fresh when I first encountered it. But for me this book didn’t have the magic of the first two.
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LibraryThing member thejohnsmith
The third of the Ibis trilogy, this is another thoroughly entertaining and satisfying novel. It has plenty of historical detail and continues the stories, and back stories, of characters that we met in the previous two installments. I've really enjoyed all three volumes.
LibraryThing member BillPilgrim
I waited a long time for this book, after finishing the second book of the trilogy. Now that I have read it, I was not disappointed. The detail and language is mesmerizing. The portrayal of British colonialism and relationships between the British and Indian people is fascinating. And the lengths
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that the British government would go to protect the opium dealers' business is shameful.
I still enjoyed River of Smoke best of the three books, for its imagining of life in Canton China.
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LibraryThing member brangwinn
If you haven’t read the first two books in the Ibis trilogy you need to understand the history of the British trade in opium. In particular, you need to read it if you blame the Chinese for the Chinese opium problem. Although the battle scenes were too detailed for me, they are a very necessary
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part of the British conquest of Hong Kong. By created a detailed story involving Chinese, British and Indians, this important period of British, Indian and Chinese history comes alive.
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LibraryThing member jklavanian
A great ending to the Ibis Trilogy. In my opinion, one of the best Indian novels, as well.
LibraryThing member mbmackay
The third and final volume of this tale of India, the East India Company and the Opium Wars in China. At his best, the author is a master story teller, weaving slightly larger than life characters into the authentic background of actual events. But, at times, the need to paint in the background
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history gets slightly in the way of the story telling.
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LibraryThing member rab1953
Flood of Fire completes Amitav Ghosh’s colourful trilogy of the linked histories of China, India and the colonizing forces, particularly Britain. I enjoyed it more than the last book, which got bogged down in ideological argument, but perhaps not quite as much as the first, which revealed a
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detailed story of people and places in the opium trade. This novel takes us into the early phases of the British invasion of China now known as the Opium Wars.
Looking at the history from a South Asian perspective, Ghosh brings in the Indian traders who hoped to profit from the opium sales and Indian soldiers who had to fight the wars, as well as an educated noble class that found itself disposessed from its former privilege in India. The character of the mystic gomusta, Baboo Nob Kissin, adds a slightly comic viewpoint as he helps bring all the forces together for what he hopes will be a destructive cataclysm that will launch a new spiritual world. The British, the Chinese and the Americans all have characters representing their viewpoints, but the main focus is the characters from the Indian subcontinent.
I found the clash of these varying national and personal interests brought a lot of interest to events that I knew of only as a historical note. Ghosh describes home life, ship life and warfare in concrete detail that gives a real sense of what’s involved and what’s at stake for the characters that he chooses for his story. (Except for a few soldiers, he chooses only relatively wealthy middle and upper class characters.) The Indian soldier Kesri, for example, lives the farce of military bureaucracy as well as 19th century cannon fire and hand-to-hand combat in conditions where food, water and ammunition had to be carried to soldiers by hand. The advantage of modern weapons over traditional ones is violently clear.
Each character’s personal motivations also develops and plays into the broader historical forces. Zachery becomes a key character as he develops from a naïve and generous American sailor with mixed-heritage into a self-interested businessman who wants status and wealth. He finds his way to prove his merit by making vast profits in the drug trade. In this, he follows the model and the moral justification of the British. They regard him as a useful tool in facilitating their own acquisition, and his anger at the emotional and social costs he has to pay is key to his motivation. However, it is Zachery that Baboo Nob Kissin is thinking of when he envisions the destruction of the world through greed. Pointedly, Zachery sees the bombardnent of Canton as the high point of rational civilization, where technology and science come together to project modern comercial values on a recalcitrant country.
There are some things in the novel that, for me, don’t entirely fit. The characters are all drawn to travel together on the Hind in their passage from ancient India to modern Hong Kong, but somehow they are all connected through the Ibis, the schooner that was at the centre of the first novel in the trilogy. The Ibis was carrying its characters to a range of new lives in Mauritius when it was hit by a storm. The ghost of a key Indian trader appears on the Ibis before another storm sinks the ship in Hong Kong harbour. This is all a bit mystical and I’m not sure what it adds to the story. Modern transport and communications are the instrument that links new and old and brings about their destruction? It is obviously a factor, but it’s not the only one or the most powerful one, and it doesn’t act in a mystical way.
Nevertheless, the narrative is a gripping way of looking at the history of southeast Asia. It shows not only the economic and political forces at work, but also their impacts on individuals of many classes. The narrative and the characters are interesting and keep the story moving along through its considerable length.
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Language

Barcode

11854
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