When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of
novels the Ibis Trilogy, he was startled to find how the lives of
the 19th century sailors and soldiers he wrote of were dictated not
only by the currents of the Indian Ocean, but also by the precious
commodity carried in enormous quantities on those currents: opium.
Most surprising at all, however, was the discovery that his own
identity and family history was swept up in the story.Smoke and
Ashes is at once a travelogue, memoir and a history, drawing on
decades of archival research. In it, Ghosh traces the
transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India, and
China, as well as the world at large.The trade was engineered by
the British Empire, which exported Indian opium to sell to China
and redress their great trade imbalance, and its revenues were
essential to the Empire's financial survival. Yet tracing the
profits further, Ghosh finds opium at the origins of some of the
world's biggest corporations, of America's most powerful families
and prestigious institutions (from the Astors and Coolidges to the
Ivy League), and of contemporary globalism itself.Moving deftly
between horticultural histories, the mythologies of capitalism, and
the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism, in Smoke and
Ashes Amitav Ghosh reveals the role that one small plant had in
making our world, now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.
V januári 1965 Gabriel García Márquez cestoval s rodinou na
dovolenku do Acapulca, keď odrazu dostal nápad. Začul vravu
mestečka Macondo. Už vedel, ako napíše svoj nový román. Vrátil sa
domov, zatvoril sa do pracovne, a keď z nej po osemnástich
mesiacoch vyšiel, v ruke držal 1 300 strán rukopisu a bol šťastný.
Román Sto rokov samoty prvý raz vyšiel v roku 1967, Márquez mal
vtedy 39 rokov a svet si navždy zapamätal jeho meno. Dnes je román
považovaný za jedno z najvýznamnejších diel latinskoamerickej a
svetovej literatúry. Je komponovaný z množstva reálnych aj
fantazijných epizód a rozpráva o pôvabných i krutých príhodách
šiestich generácií rodiny Buendíovcov z fiktívneho mestečka
Macondo.
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