The year 2020 will go down in history as the year when COVID pandemic hit the world, originating from Wuhan, China. It will also be remembered as the year in which China decided to take aggressive military postures against her neighbors—Russia, Japan, Philippines, Taiwan, India, Tajikistan, and littoral states of the South China Sea—for territorial gains. This book—the third one of a trilogy—focuses on maritime activities in the Arabian Sea. The Arabian Sea is a beehive of complicated maritime activities shared by those involved in the business of safeguarding their interests in ‘black gold’ from the Gulf countries. It is a fascinating story of China wanting to usurp India’s dominance in the Indian Ocean and the latter’s efforts to repel it. The book is a mix of facts and fiction. It is for the reader to discern where one ends and the other takes over.

The archaeological remains in the Gulf area are astounding, and still relatively unexplored. Michael Rice has produced the first up-to-date book, which encompasses all the recent work in the area. He shows that the Gulf has been a major channel of commerce for millenia, and that its ancient culture was rich and complex, to be counted with its great contempororaries in Sumer, Egypt and south-west Persia.