Books like Flood of fire by Amitav Ghosh

A 1930s wartime tale of a blind French girl and a German boy whose lives intersect in occupied France, weaving themes of survival, friendship, and the moral choices people make amid World War II.

Candide: A Tale of Conviviality and Optimism in a Wretched World

The God of Small Things chronicles the upended childhood of fraternal twins in India, exploring love, caste, and the impact of small moments on fate.

Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie's 1981 Booker Prize‑winning novel, intertwines India’s journey from colonial rule to independence with the personal saga of Saleem Sinai in a tale of historical myth and magical realism.

Balram Halwai rises from servant to entrepreneur, revealing the brutal path of ambition and survival in modern India.

A war novel that follows Union private Henry Fleming as he confronts fear and shame after fleeing battle, seeking a symbolic "red badge of courage" and ultimately taking on the role of standard-bearer.

A Fine Balance is Rohinton Mistry's critically acclaimed second novel, set in India in the mid-1970s and focusing on four unlikely individuals who come together in a city apartment during a state of emergency.

Craig of the Mohicans, a frontier scout turns away from civilization, forming a bond with a Mohican warrior as they escort two sisters across the perilous wilderness of America's frontier.

A 1751 adventure of a sixteen‑year‑old orphan kidnapped by his uncle who follows the Scottish highlanders against English rule.

In the Sundarbans, where tides wrestle with tigers, a rural community meets outsiders who change its delicate balance.

An Indian judge in a Himalayan estate grapples with retirement and family secrets when his orphaned granddaughter Sai arrives, sparking personal discovery amid the echoes of colonial history.

Richard Sharpe faces treason and battles the Maratha Empire at Assaye in 1803, vowing revenge against a rogue officer and fighting alongside the future Duke of Wellington.

When the Danes under Cnut Longsword threaten England, exiled Uhtred leads a band of outcasts north to reclaim his heritage, only to find himself embroiled in the bloodiest battle that will decide the nation's fate.

Geraldine Brooks tells the story of March, the absent father of the March family, as he leaves home to serve the Union in the Civil War, confronting the war’s psychological impact and upheaving his marriage.

In the years leading to the Opium Wars, the slave ship Ibis carries a diverse crew of sailors, stowaways, convicts, and passengers—including a bankrupt raja, a widowed village woman, a mulatto American, and an evangelical opium trader—who bond as ship-brothers on a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean.

Amitav Ghosh’s sweeping historical fiction follows Rajkumar, a humble boy in 1885 Burma who rises from exile to empire amid the British invasion, his life forever altered by the love of Dolly, a young courtier.

"Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability--at the level of literature, history, and politics--to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The extreme nature of today's climate events, Ghosh asserts, makes them peculiarly resistant to contemporary modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable for the novel; they are automatically consigned to other genres. In the writing of history, too, the climate crisis has sometimes led to gross simplifications; Ghosh shows that the history of the carbon economy is a tangled global story with many contradictory and counterintuitive elements. Ghosh ends by suggesting that politics, much like literature, has become a matter of personal moral reckoning rather than an arena of collective action. But to limit fiction and politics to individual moral adventure comes at a great cost. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence--a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all cultural forms. His book serves as a great writer's summons to confront the most urgent task of our time."--Jacket.

Kintu is a multilayered historical novel by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi that traces the cursed lineage of the Kintu clan from 1750 onward, weaving Uganda’s past with its modern challenges.

An exploration of the Harlem Renaissance through the eyes of its larger-than-life residents in a New York apartment building setting, with satirical characters and themes that intersect with Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Alain Locke. This novel is a blend of historical fiction and satire, set in the vibrant world of the 1920s Harlem and bringing to life the era's vibrant culture and characters. The story is a celebration of the Harlem Renaissance's artistic and intellectual contributions, set against the backdrop of New York's vibrant cultural scene.

In September 1838 a storm blows up on the Indian Ocean and the Ibis, a ship carrying a consignment of convicts and indentured laborers from Calcutta to Mauritius, is caught up in the whirlwind. When the seas settle, five men have disappeared - two lascars, two convicts and one of the passengers. Did the same storm upend the fortunes of those aboard the Anahita, an opium carrier heading towards Canton? And what fate befell those aboard the Redruth, a sturdy two-masted brig heading East out of Cornwall? Was it the storm that altered their course or were the destinies of these passengers at the mercy of even more powerful forces? On the grand scale of an historical epic, River of Smoke follows its storm-tossed characters to the crowded harbors of China. There, despite efforts of the emperor to stop them, ships from Europe and India exchange their cargoes of opium for boxes of tea, silk, porcelain and silver. Among them are Bahram Modi, a wealthy Parsi opium merchant out of Bombay, his estranged half-Chinese son Ah Fatt, the orphaned Paulette and a motley collection of others whose pursuit of romance, riches and a legendary rare flower have thrown together. All struggle to cope with their losses - and for some, unimaginable freedoms - in the alleys and crowded waterways of 19th century Canton.

Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines weaves a contemplative domestic narrative set against the backdrop of India and Britain, exploring political and social boundaries through the lives of boys and their families.

In 1938, Senator’s daughter Layla Beck is forced to leave her affluent life and work on the Federal Writers' Project, where she uncovers hidden family secrets and the true history of the West Virginia town of Macedonia.

Set in the Ottoman Empire from the 16th to 18th centuries, "The Architect's Apprentice" follows a young animal tamer’s rise to apprentice under Mimar Sinan, witnessing the construction of the empire’s greatest mosques and the tensions of court life.