kathleenitpdx 's review for:

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
4.0

What a great cast of characters--peasants, opium addicts, a French woman who speaks Bengali that sounds like it comes from the docks, a dispossessed raja, a free black sailor from the US, a religious zealot. This book is set in India just before the opium wars. It illustrates issues surrounding colonization and the opium trade in an interesting story.