The Years of Rice and Salt - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

The story is divided into ten parts. Book One, "Awake to Emptiness", begins with Bold and Psin, scouts in Timur's army, discovering a Magyar village where all the inhabitants have died from a plague. Timur turns his army around and orders the scouting party executed to avoid the plague but Bold escapes and wanders through the dead villages. Upon reaching the sea he is captured by Muslim slave-traders and sold into Zheng He's treasure fleet. Bold befriends a young African slave, named Kyu, who he cares for after the Chinese castrate him. In China, they eventually find work at the Beijing palace of Zhu Gaozhi, heir to the Yongle Emperor where Kyu incites violence between the eunuchs and the administrative officials. Book Two, "The Haj in the Heart", beings in Mughal India where a Hindu girl named Kokila poisons her husband's father and brother after discovering their plot to defraud the village. She is executed from her crime but is reborn as a tiger that befriends a man named Bistami who goes onto become a judge for Akbar. Bistami spends one year in Mecca before joining a caravan led by Sultan Mawji and his wife, Katima, who found a new city in Al-Andalus. In Book Three, "Ocean Continents", the Wanli Emperor launches an invasion against Japan but the fleet is swept out to sea and they accidentally discover the New World. The sailors make contact with the indigenous population but quickly leave once Admiral Kheim discovers they infected the indigenous people with disease. They take a small girl named Butterfly and sail south where they meet another civilization rich in gold. Book Four, "The Alchemist", takes place in Samarkand where a disgraced alchemist named Kalid, with the help of his friends I-wang and Braham, create scientific experiments that help describe various aspects of physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, and weaponry. Book Five, "Warp and Weft", describes how a former samurai, fleeing the Chinese to the New World, recruits and organizes the remaining tribes to form a defensive alliance, which would become the Hodenosaunee League, against the Chinese.

Book Six, "Widow Kang", follows the life of Kang Tongbi during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor. She takes in a poor Buddhist monk, Bao Ssu, and his son who she find scavenging but the monk is implicated in a series of queue cuttings and is driven away. Later, Kang meets a Muslim scholar named Ibrahim ibn Hasam and together they remember their past lives. They move to western China where they undertake work to reconcile Islamic and Confucianism beliefs. Book Seven, "The Age of Great Progress", begins during the fall of the City of Konstantiniyye to an Indian army. A Muslim doctor named Ismail is captured and sent to Travancore where their ruler, the Kerala of Travancore, pursues Indian unification and scientific advancement. Later, during the Xianfeng Emperor's reign, major flooding forces the evacuation of Chinese colonial towns in Gold Mountain. A displaced Japanese slave, Kiyoaki, and a pregnant Chinese refugee, Peng-ti, join a secret Japanese freedom movement with the aid of Ismail. Book Eight, "War of the Asuras", follows Chinese officers, Kuo, Bai and Iwa, during the Long War as the company moves south through Tibet to support their Indian allies against Muslim adversaries. Book Nine, "Nsara", follows the life of a Muslim woman named Budur and her aunt Idelba in Firanja. Budur enrolls in university where she studies history and archaeology and becomes close with a history teacher and feminist, Kirana. Idelba studies nuclear physics but dies of radiation poisoning. Budur helps organize an international organization of scientists to prevent the use nuclear power as a weapon. Book Ten, "The First Years", follows Bao Xinhua who moves to west coast of Yingzou after witnessing the assassination of his friend, and revolutionary, Kung Jianguo. He marries and raises two children before accepting a diplomatic post in Bangladesh. In his later years he moves back to Fangzhang to teach history and the philosophy of history.