The Opium Clerk
The Opium Clerk

Author: Kunal Basu

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Published: 2010-05-27

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0297863681

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An epic first novel chronicling the fortunes of the opium trade by a talented Indian writer 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.

The Opium Clerk
The Opium Clerk

Author: Kunal Basu

Publisher: Phoenix House

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9780753813393

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Hiran, born in the year of the Mutiny, is brought to Calcutta by his widowed mother and eventually his talent of reading a man's lies in his palm involves him in the affairs of his superior and his opium-addicted wife.

Yellow Emperor's Cure
Yellow Emperor's Cure

Author: Kanal Basu

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2011-10-27

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 159020882X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Lisbon, 1898: Antonio Maria, surgeon and notorious playboy, returns home after a long absence to learn his beloved father has syphilis, the scourge of both rich and poor. Determined to find a cure, Antonio sets sail for Peking, to study under the evasive but renowned Dr. Xu. But Dr. Xu does not intend to give away his knowledge, and Antonio suddenly falls in love with his assistant, the elusive Fumi. The threat of the advancing Boxer rebellion hangs over the Summer Palace, and Antonio and Fumi must decide whether to flee together or remain in China. Kunal Basu's lush, haunting tale invites comparisons to Michael Ondaatje's best work. This superb novel conjures a man discovering the love that will force him to question everything.

The Luminaries
The Luminaries

Author: Eleanor Catton

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2013-10-15

Total Pages: 860

ISBN-13: 0316126950

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The winner of the Man Booker Prize, this "expertly written, perfectly constructed" bestseller (The Guardian) is now a Starz miniseries. It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to stake his claim in New Zealand's booming gold rush. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of 12 local men who have met in secret to discuss a series of unexplained events: a wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous cache of gold has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely ornate as the night sky. Richly evoking a mid-nineteenth-century world of shipping, banking, and gold rush boom and bust, The Luminaries is at once a fiendishly clever ghost story, a gripping page-turner, and a thrilling novelistic achievement. It richly confirms that Eleanor Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international literary firmament.

The Miniaturist
The Miniaturist

Author: Kunal Basu

Publisher: Phoenix House

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 9780753817490

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Set in the court of the Emperor Akbar in 16th-century India, this is a richly detailed and sensuous tale of art, sex and political intrigue. Bihzad is the son of the emperor's chief artist and as such, he is groomed to follow in his father's footsteps. A child prodigy, Bihzad is shielded from life as he grows up in the stunning fortress town of Agra. But soon word of his talent - his wild, imaginative drawings free from the normal restrictions of court painting - spreads. When the emperor decides to move the court to Fatehpur Sikri, Bihzad is favoured among the other artists and musicians. In his spare time he paints a series of richly, erotic scenes. But as his fame increases, he begins to make enemies who are jealous of his success and who will use his hidden drawings to destroy him.

The Last Kings of Shanghai
The Last Kings of Shanghai

Author: Jonathan Kaufman

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-06-01

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0735224439

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"In vivid detail... examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties."--The Boston Globe "Not just a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China's past, it also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China's modern history."--LA Review of Books An epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist The Sassoons and the Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than one hundred seventy-five years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and nearly losing everything as the Communists swept into power. Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families ignited an economic boom and opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country's deep inequality and to the political turmoil on their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.

Tai-Pan
Tai-Pan

Author: James Clavell

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

Published: 2018-09-18

Total Pages: 889

ISBN-13: 1982537574

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The sweeping epic novel of the founding of Hong Kong, by the #1 New York Times bestselling author and unparalleled master of historical fiction, James Clavell “There can only be one Tai-Pan.” Dirk Struan rose from humble beginnings to build Struan & Company, also known as the Noble House, into the world’s largest Far East trading company. He is now the Tai-Pan—Supreme Leader—of all Tai-Pans in China. Along the way, however, he made a powerful enemy. Tyler Brock, Struan’s rival from their early opium-smuggling days, also heads a large trading fleet, second in size only to Struan’s. But it is not only silks and spices that drive their mutual companies’ wealth—the opium trade is still booming. War between England and China might be over, but the hostilities remain. Struan and Brock come to control much of England’s trade with China yet neither can control their desires or their hatred of each other. Over the years, their two families will cross paths, threatening to rip both apart, with reverberations that will echo across the generations. Struan must fight to save his company and his family, or risk seeing everything he has created destroyed at the hands of his sworn enemy. Ambition, political intrigue, and love and lust weave their way throughout the novel the New York Times called, “grand entertainment...packed with action...with blood and sin, treachery and conspiracy, sex and murder.” East and West come together in an opulent and intricately plotted narrative. A tour-de-force of historical fiction, rich in detail yet eminently readable, Tai-Pan will stay with you long after the final page.

Sea of Poppies
Sea of Poppies

Author: Amitav Ghosh

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2009-09-29

Total Pages: 565

ISBN-13: 1429930810

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first in an epic trilogy, Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies is "a remarkably rich saga . . . which has plenty of action and adventure à la Dumas, but moments also of Tolstoyan penetration--and a drop or two of Dickensian sentiment" (The Observer [London]). At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Her destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean shortly before the outbreak of the Opium Wars in China. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners on board, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of Canton. With a panorama of characters whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, Sea of Poppies is "a storm-tossed adventure worthy of Sir Walter Scott" (Vogue).

The House of Wives
The House of Wives

Author: Simon Choa-Johnston

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2016-05-03

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0143194119

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Two women compete for the affections of their opium merchant husband in a tale of friendship, fortune and rivalry in colonial Hong Kong In 1862, a young Jew from Calcutta named Emanuel Belilios leaves his dutiful wife Semah and sets sail for Hong Kong to make his fortune in the opium trade. There, he grows into a prosperous and respectable merchant, eventually falling in love with his Chinese business partner's daughter Pearl, a delicate beauty twenty years his junior. As a wedding present, he builds for her the most magnificent mansion in Hong Kong. Then Semah arrives unannounced from Calcutta to take her place as mistress of the house...and life will change irrevocably for all of them. Inspired by the lives of Choa-Johnston's ancestors, The House of Wives is an unforgettable novel about the machinations of the early opium trade, and about two remarkable women determined to secure a dynasty for their children in the tumultuous British Crown colony.

City of Dreams
City of Dreams

Author: Beverly Swerling

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-05-31

Total Pages: 594

ISBN-13: 0743218450

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A sweeping epic of two families—one Dutch, one English—from the time when New Amsterdam was a raw and rowdy settlement, to the triumph of the Revolution, when New York became a new nation’s city of dreams. In 1661, Lucas Turner, a barber surgeon, and his sister, Sally, an apothecary, stagger off a small wooden ship after eleven weeks at sea. Bound to each other by blood and necessity, they aim to make a fresh start in the rough and rowdy Dutch settlement of Nieuw Amsterdam; but soon lust, betrayal, and murder will make them mortal enemies. In their struggle to survive in the New World, Lucas and Sally make choices that will burden their descendants with a legacy of secrets and retribution, and create a heritage that sets cousin against cousin, physician against surgeon, and, ultimately, patriot against Tory. In what will be the greatest city in the New World, the fortunes of these two families are inextricably entwined by blood and fire in an unforgettable American saga of pride and ambition, love and hate, and the becoming of the dream that is New York City.