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Podcast: Arts & Ideas
Episode: Opium Tales
Description: Linking tea, sugar, opium, addiction and trade, Fariha Shaikh's essay looks at the novel An Insular Possession published in 1986 by Timothy Mo, and at Amitav Ghosh's trilogy which began in 2008 with Sea of Poppies and how their depiction of the opium trade differs from the publication in 1821 of Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater, which paved the way for drug memoirs. She also quotes from her researches into The Calcutta Review, Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country and the book Tea and Coffee written by the campaigning vegetarian William Alcott. Dr Fariha Shaikh teaches in...