Available Winter 2026
Monsoon Winds
Two thousand years ago, black pepper from southern India sold in Rome at prices comparable to gold. This spice trade created the first global economy. Long before European exploration or modern capitalism, merchants moved goods across the Indian Ocean on monsoon winds, connecting southern India to the Mediterranean, East Africa, and Southeast Asia. Pepper alone was valuable enough to ransom cities and finance expeditions. Its journey reshaped empires.
Monsoon Winds follows Indian spices from the Malabar Coast to kitchens and palaces across the ancient world. Pepper, cinnamon, and cardamom survived shipwrecks and piracy, crossed seas and deserts, and transformed what people cooked and ate. Through recreated recipes from ancient Rome, Greece, and Renaissance Europe, the book shows how cooks used these ingredients and what they actually tasted like. The trade left traces in unexpected places: Roman coins in Kerala, Sanskrit loanwords in Greek, peppercorns in the nostrils of a pharaoh's mummy. It sparked exploration, funded kingdoms, and built fortunes through merchant networks that operated for centuries before European ships entered the Indian Ocean.
This is a history of contact, commerce, and conquest, told through the spices that changed cuisines and the distances people traveled to get them.