Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

Poppy fields along the Ganges and the British East India Company, an opium factory with dreaming labourers treading the poppy mash as one would tread grapes to make wine, and ruthless traders seeking Chinese markets for their Indian-grown opium. Wealthy estates and a riverside botanical garden, the shabby slave ship Ibis, with her Lascar crew...the lush list of scenes portrayed by Amitav Ghosh in his novel of the opium trade in the nineteenth century goes on and on. Raja Neel Rattan is the financially embarrassed son of a profligate father who desperately needs cash to support his estates, his lifestyle and his many dependents. Elokeishi is his dancer consort. 

Zachary is an American on the lam from Cleveland, where his partially black heritage made him a target of white workers in the shipyards, while the police studiously looked the other way.

Deeti is the wife -- soon to be the widow -- of a sickly Sepoy war veteran of the British army. Wounded in the war, he acquired the opium habit while in the hospital. 

Kalua is a carter, a strong, large young man of low degree whose life consists of carrying villagers where they want to go in his oxcart, while keeping his distance so they can remain uncontaminated by the touch of his low caste person.

Benjamin Burnham is the unscrupulous owner of many financial interests that rake in money from opium and other sources. Believing that free trade is man's right and God's will, he is quite willing to go to war to preserve the opium trade, and indeed, the first "opium war" is in the offing.

And  Jodu is a Bengali boy who, having just lost his mother, is carrying out his deathbed promise of finding Paulette, the French-born foster sister with whom he grew up. All have their stories, and what stories they are. I'm glad the sequel was published before I finished this novel -- I can track these astonishingly compelling characters further without having to wait.

This novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2008. I'm surprised it didn't win. The first sequel, River of Smoke, came out in 2011.