ABSTRACT
Amitav Ghosh's artistic accomplishments are legion in the epic Ibis Trilogy, but paramount among them is this discernment of the structure of these world-shaping political-economic and cultural developments in their long, if temporarily interrupted, trajectory. Understanding neoliberal globalization, like coming to terms with any sea change in world history, involves thinking through its relation to its antecedents. Sea of Poppies dramatizes, how this process could play out on the ground level of interpersonal exchanges during the Age of Imperialism. River of Smoke observes that cultural transfers across the Indian Ocean arena, particularly those between the Indian Subcontinent and China, date back to ancient times, with missionaries and the faiths they carried, architectural motifs, and even deities transferring between the two lands. Flood of Fire, follows the continuing exploits of Zachary Reid, as he becomes involved in an affair with his merchant patron's wife and seeks to rise to the position of a wealthy opium trader himself.
