'The only thing that is good is poppies. They are gold.' Poppy tears, opium, heroin, fentanyl: humankind has been in thrall to the 'Milk of Paradise' for millennia. The latex of papaver somniferum is a bringer of sleep, of pleasurable lethargy, of relief from pain and hugely addictive. A commodity without rival, it is renewable, easy to extract, transport and refine, and subject to an insatiable global demand. No other substance in the world is as...

"Amitav Ghosh unravels the impact of the opium trade on global history and in his own family-the climax of a yearslong project"-- When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis Trilogy, he was startled to learn how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote about were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those...