John Murray The Shadow Lines Гош Амитав

In this extraordinary novel, Amitav Ghosh navigates through time and genres to present a unique tale. Beginning at an unspecified time in the future and ranging back to the late nineteenth century, the reader follows the adventures of the enigmatic L. Murugan. An authority on the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sir Ronald Ross, who solved the malaria puzzle in Calcutta in 1898, Murugan is in search of the elusive 'Calcutta Chromosome' • With its astonishing range of characters, advanced computer science, religious cults and wonderful portraits of Victorian and contemporary India, The Calcutta Chromosome expands the scope of the novel as we know it, as Amitav Ghosh takes on the avatar of a science thriller writer

In September 1838 a storm blows up on the Indian Ocean and the Ibis, a ship carrying a consignment of convicts and indentured laborers from Calcutta to Mauritius, is caught up in the whirlwind. When the seas settle, five men have disappeared - two lascars, two convicts and one of the passengers • Did the same storm upend the fortunes of those aboard the Anahita, an opium carrier heading towards Canton? And what fate befell those aboard the Redruth, a sturdy two-masted brig heading East out of Cornwall? Was it the storm that altered their course or were the destinies of these passengers at the mercy of even more powerful forces? • On the grand scale of an historical epic, River of Smoke follows its storm-tossed characters to the crowded harbors of China

It is 1839 and tension has been rapidly mounting between China and British India following the crackdown on opium smuggling by Beijing. With no resolution in sight, the colonial government declares war • One of the vessels requisitioned for the attack, the Hind, travels eastwards from Bengal to China, sailing into the midst of the First Opium War. The turbulent voyage brings together a diverse group of travellers, each with their own agenda to pursue. Among them is Kesri Singh, a sepoy in the East India Company who leads a company of Indian sepoys; Zachary Reid, an impoverished young sailor searching for his lost love, and Shireen Modi, a determined widow en route to China to reclaim her opium-trader husband's wealth and reputation. Flood of Fire follows a varied cast of characters from India to China, through the outbreak of the First Opium War and China's devastating defeat, to Britain's seizure of Hong Kong

At the heart of this epic saga, set just before the Opium Wars, is an old slaving-ship, The Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean, its crew a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts • In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a truly diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt Raja to a widowed villager, from an evangelical English opium trader to a mulatto American freedman. As their old family ties are washed away they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais or ship-brothers. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will span continents, races and enerations • The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of China

The Secret Lives of Colour tells the unusual stories of the 75 most fascinating shades, dyes and hues. From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso's blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history. In this book Kassia St Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colours and where they come from (whether Van Gogh's chrome yellow sunflowers or punk's fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilisation. Across fashion and politics, art and war, The Secret Lives of Colour tell the vivid story of our culture

The five of them - Stella, Priss, Kay, Helena and Polly - met at university, their lives full of lazy afternoons and late nights. Friendship seemed simple and there was such pleasure in the endless talk and in just living alongside each other • Now the women are turning forty and they're finding that a shared past can sometimes be a burden. They're all struggling to navigate the ways in which their lives have differed from the plans they made themselves and the hopes they had for each other. In the past, solidarity came easily, but now they compare lovers, husbands, jobs, children and sofas, asking how the choices they've made or failed to make hold up • As marriages end and secrets emerge, they wonder whether these people, the ones who know so much about them, are really the ones they can confide in

«Голодный прилив» — четвертый роман индийского писателя Амитава Гоша • Январь 2001: Небольшой корабль богатого шотландца Дэниела Гамильтона, прибывает в Сундарбанс, обширный архипелаг островов на мифической реке Ганг, полузатонувшую землю, где воды Гималаев сливаются с набегающими морскими приливами • В Сундарбане приливы достигают более 100 миль вглубь страны, и каждый день тысячи гектаров леса исчезают, чтобы через несколько часов появиться вновь. Какими бы густыми ни были мангровые леса, с точки зрения Гамильтона, они лишь немногим менее бесплодны, чем пустыня • Эксцентричный шотландец и ученые на борту корабля высаживаются на берег, чтобы изучить эту малоизвестную среду обитания • Книга на английском языке • A profound and absorbing saga from the Internationally Bestselling and Man Booker Prize shortlisted author • 'Amitav Ghosh is such a fascinating and seductive writer… I cannot think of another contemporary writer with whom it would be this thrilling to go so far, so fast' The Times • January 2001: A small ship, led by wealthy Scotsman Daniel Hamilton, arrives in the Sundarbans, a vast archipelago of islands in the mythical river Ganges, a half-drowned land where the waters of the Himalayas merge with the incoming tides of the sea

In 1999 a programmer is trying to fix the millennium bug, but can't shake the sense he's been chosen for something • In 1888 five women are brutally murdered in the East End by a troubled young man in thrall to a mysterious master • In 1777 an apprentice engraver called William Blake has a defining spiritual experience; thirteen years later this vision returns • And in 1666 poet and revolutionary John Milton completes the epic for which he will be remembered centuries later • But where does the feeling come from that the world is about to end?

In 1916, Sven Ormson leaves Stockholm to seek adventure in Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago where darkness reigns four months of the year, and where he might witness the splendour of the Northern Lights one night or be attacked by a polar bear the next. After a devastating accident while digging for coal, Sven heads north again and ends up on an uninhabited fjord living in a hut he builds, alone except for the company of a loyal dog, testing himself against the elements. Years into his routine isolation, the arrival of an unlikely visitor sparks a chain of events that brings Sven into a family of fellow outsiders and determines the course of the rest of his life • Inspired by a real person and written with wry humour, in prose as beautiful as the stark landscape it evokes, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven is a testament to the strength of human bonds, reminding us that even in the most inhospitable conditions, we are not beyond the reach of love

A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water were the first two volumes in a projected trilogy that would describe the walk that Patrick Leigh Fermor undertook at the age of eighteen from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. 'When are you going to finish Vol. III ' was the cry from his fans; but although he wished he could, the words refused to come. The curious thing was that he had not only written an early draft of the last part of the walk, but that it predated the other two. It remains unfinished but The Broken Road - edited and introduced by Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper - completes an extraordinary journey

At eighteen, Somlata married into the Mitras: a once noble Bengali household whose descendants have taken to pawning off the family gold to keep up appearances • When Pishima, the embittered matriarch, dies, Somlata is the first to discover her aunt-in-law's body - and her sharp-tongued ghost • First demanding that Somlata hide her gold from the family's prying hands, Pishima's ghost continues to wreak havoc on the Mitras. Secrets spilt, cooking spoilt, Somlata finds herself at the centre of the chaos. And as the family teeter on the brink of bankruptcy, it looks like it's up to her to fix it • The Aunt Who Wouldn't Die is a frenetic, funny and fresh novel about three generations of Mitra women, a jewellery box, and the rickety family they hold together

'It was a strange time. He felt like he was happy • It was strange because it wasn't so long ago that he was convinced the only way out of the depression that had crippled him since he was a child, was death.' • But now, he is on a high-speed train travelling from Rome to Modena, a failed novelist on the tail of a famous physicist whose memoir he is ghostwriting. The more of another man's life he writes, the more his debt to his publisher is paid off. But nothing would be possible, not the journey, not the writing, not his beautiful wife who is waiting for him at the hotel, had he not experienced the life-altering, life-saving treatment for the darkness which had been hovering since the chemical spill in West Virginia