Monsoon (Macmillan pocket Tagore edition)

Smith's solid, competent prose does not always avoid the hackneyed, but effectively conveys both the heat of battle and the savoury smells of lands experienced for the first time. Hal Franklin has four sons and the complex tragedy of their relationships dominates the book as brother is pitted against brother in love, and war, and treachery. The plot, though, is only a part of what is important here; the Indian Ocean trade was the site of one of the great confrontations between the English-speaking world and Islam--a conflict, between the brash mariners with their shiny new guns and the long-established, scholarly, brave, pious rulers of Arabia and the East African coast. A conflict whose outcome was open to doubt.--Roz Kaveney