KUNAL BASU

Hiran is born in 1857: the year of Mutiny and the year his father dies. Brought to Calcutta by his widowed mother he turns out to have few talents, apart from an uncanny ability to read a man's fate in his palm. When luck gets him a job at the auction house, Hiran finds himself embroiled in a mysterious trade, and even more deeply embroiled in the affairs of his nefarious superior, the infamous Mr. Jonathan Crabbe.

Commissioned to procure a child for Mr. Crabbe's opium addicted wife, he stumbles upon his own future. An unlikely hero, Hiran, the opium clerk, is caught up in rebellion and war, buffeted by storms at sea, by love and intrigue, innocently implicated in fraud and dark dealings.

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• “A first novel of rare assurance, imaginatively set and richly textured with tales that spin away into elliptical orbits. Basu's evocative descriptions conjure the magic and heartbreak of the East. It is a phantasmagoric world, rich in stories, visions and dreams, not unlike those inspired by the heinous drug itself.”
  The Times Literary Supplement
• “Basu has found a fresh angle. The blend of personal discovery and political revolt is handled with authority.”
  The Independent on Sunday
• “Basu draws us in and on, from one end of the world to another. Intrigues and echoes hang about us like smoke, like dust, like desire. Perhaps our own.”
  Atlanta Journal Constitution
• “The Opium Clerk is packed with historical information and is imaginatively written.”
  The Daily Telegraph
• “At a historical level, the novel occurs along the trail of opium. At a personal level it happens in the lives of many people in many lands. Spiritually the novel happens at the level of desire, in all its multifarious manifestations.”
  The Oxford Times
• “Part history, part allegory, The Opium Clerk is also something of a 19th century romance populated by pirates, beautiful maidens, wild sailors and seers. Basu's book is the first by an Indian author to take place, even partially, in China.”
  The Reporter (Canada)
• “For a first fiction writer, the writer shows great ambition and a wildering imagination.”
  Irish Independent
• “Basu spins a complex, captivating tale, weaving in dreams and visions in a manner reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Salman Rushdie. The historical backdrop is dazzlingly evoked. So let go of your linear outlook and get swept away.”
  Ivenus, Ireland
• “In The Opium Clerk, Basu has bravely explored virgin ground. The novel leads us through a labyrinth of mysteries and perplexities, which was indeed the once thriving colonial underworld.”
  The Times of India
• “Just one whiff is enough. You don't have to be an opium addict to savour the slow burning languor of the sticky-sweet saga of the opium trade that Kunal Basu places before you. There is nothing timid about Basu's intentions. He has opium in his blood.”
  India Today Magazine
• “Basu has a gift for conjuring up scenes.”
  South China Morning Post

• Kunal Basu on The Opium Clerk
  Journal of the Department of English, University of Calcutta
• Silent Observer of the opium trail
  The Oxford Times

• God's Own Medicine
  The Times Literary Supplement
• Such a Poppy Love Story
  India Today
• Walking Calcutta's Wild Side
  The Statesman
• Forgotten Child of Empire
  The Express Magazine
• Appropriating Identities
  The Book Review
• Evening out the Rise and Fall
  The Telegraph
• The Opium Clerk: Haariye Jawa Smriti
  Anandalok