"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...