Product Description

Rajkumar is only another boy, helping on a market stall in the dusty square outside the royal palace, when the British force the Burmese King, Queen and all the Court into exile! He is rescued by the far-seeing Chinese merchant, and with him builds up a logging business in upper Burma. But haunted by his vision of the Royal Family, he journeys to the obscure town in India where they have been exiled. The picture of the tension between the Burmese, the Indian and the British, is excellent. Among the great range of characters are one of the court ladies, Miss Dolly, whom he marries: and the redoubtable Jonakin, part of the British-educated Indian colony, who with her husband has been put in charge of the Burmese exiled court. The story follows the fortunes - rubber estates in Malaya, businesses in Singapore, estates in Burma - which Rajkumar, with his Chinese, British and Burmese relations, friends and associates, builds up - from 1870 through the Second World War to the scattering of the extended family to New York and Thailand, London and Hong Kong in the post-war years.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5917 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Beginning in 1885, with the British invasion of Mandalay and the capture of the Burmese king and queen, and encompassing over 100 years to modern-day India and Burma (Myanmar), Amitav Ghosh has created in The Glass Palace a monument to life in colonial central and Southeast Asia. The story follows three generations from three families, spreading its wings across the world, from Malaya to New York. Yet despite the epic scale, the gentle and intimate detail of the characters and their interwoven relationships removes any need for an understanding of this area of the world in geographical or historical terms. The map at the back of the book is useful for following the characters' travels as their fortunes and rulers (British, Japanese, military government) change, but it is the atmosphere and feel of the era and location that Ghosh captures astutely. Each city or border is not a mark on a map with political significance but a home, a memory and a reality.

With each generation the characters' lives and personalities contrast and intertwine according to the rise and fall of the countries'--and the world's--politics. Rajkumar, the Indian peasant who makes a fortune through teak and his wife Dolly, the breathtakingly beautiful maid of the Burmese royal family, contrast to Uma the Indian widow who becomes a champion for Indian independence after her liberating time in the USA and the Americanised Matthew who makes a life in his half-native Malaya as a rubber plantation owner, while Uma's Bengali nieces and nephew contrast to Rajkumar and Dolly's newly wealthy sons. Yet they all suffer in the Second World War, whether as a soldier, refugee or evacuee discriminated against because of their skin colour. Ghosh's focus on the war in Burma, from the viewpoint of Indian officers in the British army, who have been imbued through their regimental history to believe in their allegiance to "their" country (i.e. Britain and not India), reveals a side of both world wars that is rarely told. The struggle these British subjects experience, as to whether colonial or fascist masters are better, is not something that shaped the general European knowledge of the Second World War, where "good" and "evil" seemed much clearer.

However, The Glass Palace is not only about war; and the full circle it travels, from one glass palace in the lush and rich 19th-century Burma to another glass palace in repressed and impoverished Myanmar is, seemingly with ease from the lush and rich prose, satisfying and informative. It is a novel in which the characters will always go on living, and whose ideals will never die. --Olivia Dickinson

Review
'A distinctive voice, polished and profound' TLS 'Ambitious, multigenerational, The Glass Palace is akin to a 19th century Russian novel...a rich, layered epic that probes the meaning of identity and homeland.' LA Times 'An absorbing story of a world in transition, brought to life through characters who love and suffer with equal intensity.' JM Coetzee 'A Doctor Zhivago for the Far East.' The Independent

Rajkumar Raha is 12 when he is orphaned on a sampan tethered in a mangrove-lined estuary. He makes his way from Bengal into Burma, to Mandalay, just ahead of the British arriving to depose King Thebaw. On the eve of the Royal Family's departure into exile, Raha sees, in the Glass Palace, Dolly, the Queen's 10-year-old handmaid. This is obsession at first sight. Almost 20 years later, having made his fortune in timber, Raha seeks out Dolly in her exile in Ratnagiri. Throughout the novel, the Empire expands and then retracts, fortunes are won and lost, the face of the world changes. The novel follows Raha's family through three generations and many cities. It teems with servants of the British Empire and with their colonial subjects. This is the East as seen by its own people, described by a writer whose allegiance is simply to the human. Ghosh is one of the most sympathetic post-colonial voices to be heard today. He looks at love and loyalty, and examines questions of Empire and responsibility, of tradition and modernity. This is a funny, sad, entertaining, wise and - ultimately - a hopeful book. I loved it. Review by AHDAF SOUEIF. Editor's note: Ahdaf Soueif is the author of The Map of Love. (Kirkus UK)

About the Author
The author was born in India of Burmese parents. Educated in India and Britain, he now lives in New York.

Customer Reviews

Exciting and unusual escape reading.
Full of the colors, scents, and sounds of exotic Burma in the 1860's, this novel comes to life within the Glass Palace of the royal family and in the streets of Mandalay in the final days before the British arrive to colonize. Giving life to the Burmese point of view, Rajkumar and Dolly, orphaned children working as servants when the novel begins, become the founders of a family whose members, in succeeding generations, reflect the economic and the political realities in Burma, Malaya, and India over the 150 years from the British raj to the present day.

Working as suppliers of teak, petroleum, and rubber, members of this family and of two other families with whom they have close ties, also work as soldiers supporting Britain during World Wars I and II, with the independence movement in Burma and India, and eventually as anti-communist intellectuals in the present state of Myanmar. By having these families participate in the important historical events which occurred in this part of the world, Ghosh does a remarkable job of personalizing these events and making them memorable for readers. The action, especially during the World War II invasion of Malaya by the Japanese, is vivid and exciting, as people try to flee the shooting in Malaya but find roads closed to Burma and Siam. While this is not War and Peace, The Glass Palace is a fascinating look into the history and cultures of a region which has had little exposure in western novels. Mary Whipple

A lovely, crisp tale of the East
This story is a beautiful introduction to a century of life in India, Burma and Malaya. The characters are both symbolic and endearing each representing an archetype without loosing human depth. The backdrop of daily local customs adds colour and subtlety to the tale. Most of all, it is written in a simple and crisp English which will shame most modern Western authors.

Not sure about this one...
I have given this book 3 stars, not as a comment on how well it is written, but on my own personal enjoyment of it. It concerns 3 generations of a family who have links to the last king of Burma, and takes place in Burma and India. It is undoubtedly a well researched and well written book. There just didn't seem to be enough feeling in it, I didn't sympathise with any of the characters and found I didn't really care about them. Perhaps it was just the subject matter......