The Nutmeg's Curse

With the lockdown in place and Ghosh's wife Deborah Baker travelling to Virginia after the death of her mother, he was inspired to begin writing the book after finding an online PDF copy of an obscure book that recounted the massacre of the Bandanese.

On 21 April 1621, Maarten Sonck, a former tax official, was commissioned by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to destroy the aforementioned village.

When a lamp fell to the floor in the meeting room called "bale-bale", where the Dutch were staying, causing a fire, Sonck panicked, thinking that this was a signal of the local population's revolt against the colonisers.

[6] Andrea Wulf described it as a "strange book, but not in a bad way" in a review for the Financial Times, saying it is "meandering and looping".

Although Wulf said Ghosh's ideas were not new, she praised it, saying "the simplicity of his main argument and the power of his storytelling that makes the book work.