Penguin Books India, in association with the ITC Hotel The Kakatiya, is releasing Amitava Ghosh's book Sea Of Poppies, on 24th July, at the Hyder Mahal. An epic of immense scope and narrative power, “Sea of Poppies” is the first book in Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy. Sea of Poppies” is set in the 1830s in a huge ship, the “Ibis”. Its destiny is a tumultuous journey across the Indian Ocean to the Mauritius Islands with its load of motley sailors that include stowaways, convicts and coolies.

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He grew up in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), Sri Lanka, Iran and India. After graduating from the University of Delhi, he went to Oxford to study Social Anthropology and received a Master of Philosophy and a Ph. D in 1982.

In 1980, he went to Egypt to do field work in the fellaheen village of Lataifa. The work he did there resulted in In an Antique Land (IAAL 1993). Ghosh has been a journalist and published his first novel, The Circle of Reason in 1986, and his second, The Shadow Lines, in 1988. Since then, he has published IAAL, The Calcutta Chromosome, and The Glass Palace, done fieldwork in Cambodia, lived in Delhi and written for a number of publications. He currently lives in New York and teaches at Columbia University.

Entry is by invitations only. Please contact the venue at 2340-0132 for further details.