The Glass Palace: Palace here is the Grand palace of Burma formerly known as the Golden land . This novel is a long , long history covering events from the British conquest of Rangoon to its conquest by the military junta. The narrative covers the life of an Indian orphan Rajkumar, his love for the palace maid dolly, their future together, their kids, second world war, the dilemmas of an Indian soldier fighting on behalf of the British ( when India is in throes of its own Independence Movement),the reconciliation of past with the present covering three generations,discourses on vintage cars, cameras, elephants, anthrax and many more , reminding of an era when rubber was newly introduced and was banned for sale by the German Govt. during WW1.. phew...
Hmm, so the sweep of the book is so vast and so many characters come and go that you feel reading a collection of stories , loosely bound by a genealogy and a progressing timeline rather than a well-knit story .The story is more into start and stop mode. This book begins on the day British conquer Rangoon , exile the Royal Family to India, witnessed by an Indian orphan Rajkumar. Rajkumar exploits the opportunities presented by the Timber trade, followed by Rubber and as time goes on becomes one of the wealthiest persons in Burma. He is literally ruined by the timber when his Timer horde is bombed in WW2. Thus , one WW makes him and another breaks him.Meanwhile, we have the travails of Royal family with the British Govt and as I have mentioned, a plethora of topics. This story lacks the coherence and lyricism of Amitav Ghosh and is one of his weaker novels. Otherwise, in contrasting present and past and changing world, he surpasses any of the contemporary fiction writers.
This book could have been his magnum opus if he had been able to cover the canvas as comprehensively and blended the colors and images into a semblance of a mosaic. Otherwise the story remains brilliant in patches, particularly,the scenic beauty of upper Burma, hitherto unknown by most of us (may be known only by geography enthusiasts, esp, the surface oil wells), the details of anthrax in elephant, their instinctive intelligence, communities bulit around teak forests,Indian Army in WW2, the landscape of Ratnagiri hosting the Royal Family and its eventual decay & dilution .
This book comes as a slight disappointment to Amitav Ghosh fans but can be read as a series of stories leisurely over a period of time.A human story covering, so many characters that the character sketches get blurred. Still, this can be read as a change of era kind of story.
