by Amitav Ghosh
First published 2008
The ship Ibis cuts through Indian Ocean waters, bound for China's Opium Wars with human cargo that defies every social boundary. A bankrupt raja rubs shoulders with a widowed tribeswoman. An American freedman of mixed race shares space with a spirited French orphan. Sailors work alongside stowaways, while coolies travel with convicts. Colonial society has cast them all adrift, severing the family bonds that once defined their identities. The ship becomes their new world, and they forge an unexpected kinship as jahaj-bhais, ship-brothers united by circumstance rather than blood. Their journey carries them from the opium-rich fields along the Ganges to Canton's winding streets, but the real voyage happens between people. As the Ibis sails toward war, these unlikely companions discover that shared struggle can create family bonds stronger than those they left behind. Their alliance will grow into something larger, a connection spanning continents and generations, born from the collision of East and West in an age of empire.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, adventure, 19th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unlikely-allies
Setting: China, India, Indian Ocean
Period: 19th Century
515 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Content warnings: colonialism