The Opium Clerk - Softcover
Hiran is born in 1857, some months after his father is accidentally trampled to death in the confusion following the Indian Mutiny ¿ Hiran¿s fortunes seem somehow eternally bound up in the fortunes of India. Brought to Calcutta by his mother, he fails to become a Brahmin like his father, despite a talent for reading palms, and finds work as a clerk in the busy Auction House. It¿s some time before Hiran learns in exactly what commodity the Auction House deals: the mysterious brown mud that passes through East India en route to China, the source of much of Britain¿s wealth. When Hiran¿s Western manners and education bring him to the attention of a wealthy Englishman, he becomes ensnared in another kind of trading. Commissioned to find a baby for the Englishman¿s opium-addicted wife, he trawls the streets and seafronts of Calcutta.
Kunal Basu¿s panoramic first novel follows the vagaries of Hiran¿s life, and the flow of the opium trade, from Calcutta to Canton. Disguised as a missionary, he survives cholera, piracy and war in China, arriving back in India to find his homeland on the verge of another rebellion. And he finds himself suddenly father to a half-caste son, the child abandoned by the Englishman and his wife when they fled back in disgrace to Britain. As Hiran dedicates himself to the education of his new son, the cycle of regeneration continues. Douglas, now an adult, neither black nor white, flees India himself for the Orient, again carried along on the flood of opium, this time to Borneo, to Sarawak: the land of the White Rajahs.
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Book Description:
An epic first novel chronicling the fortunes of the opium trade by a very talented new Indian writer
About the Author:
Kunal Basu is 42. He was born in Calcutta but has spent much of his adult life in Canada where he teaches at McGill university. For the last year he has lived and worked in Oxford although he travels regularly to Canada, China and India in the course of his work. He has previously published short stories in the London Magazine and other publications.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherW&N
- Publication date2001
- ISBN 10 1861591926
- ISBN 13 9781861591920
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages256
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