Critical Praise

“FLOOD OF FIRE is a huge, sprawling, rumbustious novel…. It’s a remarkable achievement: an adventure novel full of feeling, but one which also invites --- even compels --- you to think about the assumptions which men act upon.” 

—Allan Massie, The Scotsman

“Ghosh’s story roars along, constantly flipping between high seriousness and low humour…. Ghosh sketches the larger sweep of history. He marshals the language of tiny details, from naval and military terminology to food and clothes and interiors, from boudoir to battlefield, in order to bolster our sense of how enormous and wide-ranging were the effects of this period of history, and of the unforgiving, brutalising opium trade in particular, how greatly it shaped international relations, communities and patterns of migration.”

—Alex Clark, The Guardian

“It is a testimony to Ghosh’s great skills that he can both teach us history and create believable fictional characters…. What makes Ghosh’s characters come alive all the more is the use of language.”

—Mihir Bose, The Independent

“Ghosh’s scrupulous depiction of army life is just one part of this tour de force of historical description. Together, the novels are a weighty and precious chronicle of those times, a compendium of lost habits, languages and attitudes…. FLOOD OF FIRE is all action [and] has all the romance, subterfuge and ingenious plotting to keep Ghosh’s audience firmly lagowed. But it is the integrity of his historical vision that will ensure his books outlast other literary dumbpokes.”

—Alice Albinia, Financial Times