17 Books to Read if You Loved ‘Smoke and Ashes’

Moving deftly between horticultural histories, the mythologies of capitalism and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism, Smoke and Ashes reveals the pivotal role one small plant has played in the making of the world as we know it – a world that is now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.

Amitav Ghosh’s Smoke and Ashes is a revealing (and often hilarious!) book about civilisational failures and evils. There’s not a single dull moment in this memoir-travelogue that peels the layers of history to show us that at the centre of most major geopolitical events is a literal flower. Unassuming and vivid, but a flower that has a mind of its own.

Now to think that a flower can have a mind of its own is a funny thing. But as Ghosh traces the roots of Imperialism and Colonialism, Afghan wars and global political turmoils to the poppy, the funniness of the matter rapidly dries up.

The history of opium trade is a history rife with violence and horror. That it is often written as an economic history somewhat masks the human cost of the enterprise. Smoke and Ashes stands out. It is both “harrowing” (as one review of the book identifies ably), and self-aware. Debunking the teleological logic of Progress, revealing the historical weight of everyday objects like tea, and our own incredibly delusional perception of the world, this is a book for our times.

Now every day in a postcolonial world is a new dawn impressing an old truth: That the colonists were the muck of the earth. S&A firmly upholds that truth, in hilarious rejoinders and jibes that Ghosh directs at the Empire. In incredibly earnest and accessible prose, Ghosh delineates the complex histories of wars and conflicts in South Asian countries, somehow all focalized around the trade of everyday commodities, from sugar to tea to opium.

Here is a comprehensive list of books to read if you enjoyed reading Smoke and Ashes:

‘In thinking about the opium poppy’s role in history it is hard to ignore the feeling of an intelligence at work. The single most important indication of this is the poppy’s ability to create cycles of repetition, which manifest themselves in similar phenomena over time. What the opium poppy does is clearly not random; it builds symmetries that rhyme with each other.

It is important to recognize that these cycles will go on repeating, because the opium poppy is not going away anytime soon. In Mexico, for instance, despite intensive eradication efforts the acreage under poppy cultivation has continued to increase. Indeed, there is more opium being produced in the world today than at any time in the past.

Only by recognizing the power and intelligence of the opium poppy can we even begin to make peace with it.’