Opium Wars

Kuang is beloved for her historical fantasy novels: the “Poppy War” trilogy, inspired by China’s Opium Wars, and “Babel,” a critique of colonialism set in an alternate-universe Oxford.

Hong Kong became a British colony after two Opium Wars in the 19th century and colonial rule lasted for 156 years.

Hong Kong was wrested from China by Britain in three phases, starting with the mid-19th century Opium Wars.

Its colonial status was the result of a pair of 19th century treaties signed at the end of the first and second Opium Wars, along with the granting of a 99-year lease in 1898 to the New Territories, which greatly expanded the size of the colony.

Warraich traces the history of opium, heroin, and morphine, from the 19th-century Opium Wars to the post-World War II rise in consumerism and pill-popping culture.