The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery (Audiobook, MP3)
From Victorian India to near-future New York, The Calcutta Chromosome takes listeners on a wondrous journey through time as a computer programmer trapped in a mind-numbing job hits upon a curious item that will forever change his life. When Antar discovers the battered I.D. card of a long-lost acquaintance, he is suddenly drawn into a spellbinding adventure across centuries and around the globe, into the strange life of L. Murugan, a man obsessed with the medical history of malaria, and into a magnificently complex world where conspiracy hangs in the air like mosquitoes on a summer night.
The Honourable Company - A History of the English East India Company
For 213 years, beginning around 1700, the "incorrigible pioneering" of merchant traders of the East India Company furthered the "peculiarly diffuse character" of the British Empire. British author Keay tells an ambitious story with sweep and brio, encompassing the company's origins as a "bane of bedraggled pioneers" in search of spices in the remote Indonesian archipelago; its role in the 1690 founding of Calcutta (an episode of "commercial greed and political mayhem"); and the opening up of China in 1700, which was to become the company's most profitable trade.
