-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
The Ibis Trilogy #3
by Amitav Ghosh
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.
"Ghosh imbues his narrative with historical sweep and the lavish sights and sounds of southern Asia, beautifully dramatizing the rise of Hong Kong and the strained legacy of European colonialism." ―O: The Oprah Magazine
"[Flood of Fire] brims with wonderful historical details, clearly the result of prodigious research... . Ghosh has so much passion for his subject, so much care for his characters and such a command of his prose that readers will find it easy to surrender to the story." - Laila Lalami, The New York Times Book Review
"Flood of Fire is, for my money, the best of the three volumes: It adds colorful threads to the plot, weaving them into the existing story and tying them off in a most satisfactory way. Further, the novel provides highly dramatic depictions of key land and sea battles of the First Opium War. Beyond that, it presents a savvy account of the influence of the opium lobby on British foreign policy and the mental contortions of the "Apostles of Liberty" who identified the diabolical trade, so destructive of the people of both India and China, with freedom, commercial righteousness and religious enlightenment - all virtuously bestowed with guns and gunboats." - Katherine A. Powers, Chicago Tribune
"[Combines] a historian's affection for the archive with an anthropologist's appreciation of the thickness of local realities and a novelist's gift for plot, character, and language ... Ghosh fashions a history that seems always on the move, vibrantly and restlessly progressing toward its conclusion." - Bookforum
"A writer of uncommon talent who combines literary flair with a rare seriousness of purpose ... His descriptions bring a lost world to life." - The Washington Post Book World
"Dashing ... This novel unfolds like those paper landscapes that expand under water: Each character, each situation, expands into its own world. All are woven into a four-dimensional tapestry depicting the explosive force of cultural exchange driven by the immense wealth to be derived from unchained desire." - Ann Klefstad, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"The [Ibis Trilogy] books are not only operatic-big personalities, lots of drama-but a compelling and vividly imagined chronicling of the height of British colonialism, and the development of modern Asia." ―Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life, Harper's Bazaar
"A writer of supreme skill and intelligence." - The Atlantic Monthly
This information about Flood of Fire was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Amitav Ghosh is the author of the bestselling Ibis Trilogy, composed of Sea of Poppies (short-listed for the Man Booker Prize), River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire. His other novels include The Circle of Reason, which won the Prix Médicis étranger, and The Glass Palace. He is also the author of many works of nonfiction, including The Great Derangement, The Nutmeg's Curse, and Smoke and Ashes. In 2018, Ghosh became the first English-language writer to win the Jnanpith Award, India's highest literary honor. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
If you liked Flood of Fire, try these:
by Megha Majumdar
Published 2026
Megha Majumdar's electrifying new novel, following her acclaimed New York Times bestseller A Burning—longlisted for the National Book Award—is set in a near-future Kolkata, India, ravaged by climate change and food scarcity, in which two families seeking to protect their children must battle each other. A piercing and propulsive tour de...
by Tan Twan Eng
Published 2024
From the bestselling author of The Garden of Evening Mists, a spellbinding novel about love and betrayal, colonialism and revolution, storytelling and redemption.
by David Morrell
Published 2017
The notorious Opium-Eater returns in the sensational climax to David Morrell's acclaimed Victorian mystery trilogy.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
