A NEW YORK TIMES 2023 SUMMER READ


Meet Tony: the first Indian to set foot on American soil.


Among the settlers, slaves, and indentured servants that travel across the Atlantic to the New World in the early 1600s, there is also Tony. As a child, his home in India becomes a trading outpost for the English; as an orphaned teenager, he is kidnapped in London and bound to servitude on a Virginia plantation. But Tony is not giving up on his dreams just yet. Under the rule of a sadistic plantation owner, he forms a tender bond with a young boy who will haunt his nightmares; on an exploration inland alongside a trader and Native Americans, he realises the world is vaster and more mysterious than he could have imagined; and in Jamestown, he finally earns himself a position as a physician’s apprentice, an ambition he has long harboured. The East Indian is a compelling story of family, friendship, and finding oneself in the seeds of a new world.