Photo: Mathieu Genon/ supplied
The opioid crisis gripping large parts of the world is well recognised: the widespread addiction to opium based pain killers, which have caused the death of millions. Perhaps less understood is the long and complex history of the opium poppy and how it came to have this devastating impact on the world.
Award winning writer Amitav Ghosh has published 20 books of fiction and non fiction focused mostly on his country of birth, India. His Ibis trilogy - Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, Flood of Fire - is sweeping historical saga set during the outbreak of the first Opium War. The research he undertook for those books, forms the basis of his new work of non fiction, 'Smoke and Ashes' - a deep history of the opium and heroin trade and how the world became hooked.
He joins Kathryn from his home in New York.
