A profound and absorbing saga from theInternationally BestsellingandMan Booker Prizeshortlisted author

‘Amitav Ghosh is such afascinatingandseductivewriter I cannot think of another contemporary writer with whom it would be thisthrillingto 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 the Sundarbans the tides reach more than 100 miles inland, and every day thousands of hectares of forest disappear only to re-emerge hours later. Dense as the mangrove forests are, from Hamiltons point of view, it is only a little less barren than a desert.

The eccentric Scotsman and the scientists on board the ship disembark to study this little-known environment, and to trace the journeys of the descendants of this society. Their goal? To create a utopian society, of all races and religions, and conquer the might of the Sundarbans.