ABOUT THE STORY One of the greatest achievements in the world of the Indian novel—one of startling mimetic depth and variety, as well as linguistic invention and narrative power—reaches its climax with the publication of Flood of Fire, the final book in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy. In this excerpt, taken from the novel’s opening pages, we see Shireen, the wife of the Parsi opium trader Bahram Modi and a minor protagonist of the series’ preceding volume, finally being sucked into the tides of power, trade and migration that roil the trilogy’s characters. The narrative then leaps across to China, where we return to another figure familiar to the series’ readers: Neel Rattan Halder, a royal expelled from Kolkata by the British now ruminating in Canton over his own memories of “Seth Bahram.”

Flood of Fire is now out in India, from Penguin Random House.

Flood of Fire