River of smoke by Amitav Ghosh

Book Summary

River of Smoke is the second novel in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy, set in the 1830s in the years just before the First Opium War.

The story picks up after the events of Sea of Poppies. It centers on various characters whose lives intersect in the port city of Canton (Guangzhou), China, with the central plot revolving around the opium trade. 

Key threads include:

• Bahram Modi, a Parsi trader from Bombay, who invests heavily in opium, hoping that the Chinese ban does not destroy his business. He is both morally conflicted and pragmatically ambitious.

• Paulette, an orphaned French woman who travels disguised aboard the Ibis in Sea of Poppies, now involved in a quest linked to rare botanical specimens (e.g. the golden camellia), botanical exploration, and trade.

• The novel also explores the impact of the impending ban on opium by Chinese authorities: conflict, corruption, political intrigue, and the consequences for local Chinese societies as well as foreign traders. 

• There are also powerful depictions of migrant lives, indentured labour, colonial trade systems, cross‑cultural exchanges. The novel doesn’t just narrate events but builds atmospheres — marketplaces, ships, teeming ports, the smells and textures of trade goods, the tensions of colonial power. 

Ultimately, River of Smoke is an epic ‑ historical novel that shows how trade, empire, addiction, morality, and identity all weave together in a turbulent moment in global history. It’s both a story of human ambition and frailty, and of structures (economic, political) that shape people’s lives in powerful, often painful ways.

About the Author: 

Amitav Ghosh (born 11 July 1956, in Calcutta/Kolkata) is among India’s most respected and internationally acclaimed novelists. He was educated in India (Delhi) and abroad (Oxford), and holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology. His work often combines deep historical research, global settings (especially involving the Indian Ocean, China, Southeast Asia), and concerns about colonialism, trade, identity, migration, and now, increasingly, climate change. Among his notable works are Sea of Poppies, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Shadow Lines, and more recently, works of non‑fiction like The Great Derangement. Ghosh has received many prestigious awards, including the Jnanpith Award (2018), Padma Shri, and various international honours. He is known both for richly detailed storytelling and for bringing historical periods alive in ways that illuminate not just the past but their echoes in the present.