Features disabled! Please read the following:<< I Have the Plugin - Show Flash Content >> | << No Plugin - Hide this Warning >>
A Novel“I had never seen a kiss before. In India, in those days, such things were excised from sight by unseen censors, in real life as in film. … What I saw that morning in my great-grand-aunt Uma’s bedroom remains to this day the most tender, the most moving sight I have ever seen, and from the day when I sat down to write this book – the book my mother never wrote – I knew that it was here that it would end.” - the character Jaya, in the closing sentences of The Glass Palace
Here I am traveling in Guatemala, and I cannot get away from books about India and Burma! Still, of the handful I've read since leaving the language school in Oaxaca last month, The Glass Palace seemed the most appropriate book to highlight here. (I hope to include a selection depicting Mayan culture a bit later.) Set in Burma, India and Malaysia during the late 19th and 20th centuries, The Glass Palace is a historical novel centered on the life of Rajkumar, an Indian orphan marooned in Mandalay as a boy. After witnessing the British army's invasion of the city and swift victory over the Burmese, Rajkumar becomes a teak baron and jumps back-and-forth between India and Burma. He marries an attendant of the Burmese royal family exiled in India and settles into a comfortable life in Rangoon. Later, during the turmoil of the early 1940s, Rajkumar flees with his family on foot. They escape to India, though not without loss, where he lives out the final years of his life. Having provided that synopsis, I must acknowledge that it is a poor summary of the novel's plot - in part because while Rajkumar remains an important character throughout, several others take center stage along the way. In addition, author Amitav Ghosh weaves together a story spanning more than a century. From the 1880s to 1990s, he covers a great deal of ground and a fair bit of history as well. It is these attributes I found most appealing about The Glass Palace. Normally, a novel with nearly a dozen well-developed characters falls flat at times; not so here. Each of Ghosh's central characters is intriguing and important to the overall plot. The historical accounts are interesting and broad. From the exile of Burma's last king to the Indian independence movement and the emergence of Aung San Suu Kyi, various historical figures and events are integrated into the story. These elements aren't merely reported; they are directly relevant to the lives of one or more of the central characters. Ghosh raises a number of important questions as well. There are Heart of Darkness elements present: questions about the morality of colonial conquest, fuzzy lines separating "developed" and "savage" minds, the general madness of human behavior. Among the themes recurring throughout the novel is the question of why and how sepoys (Indian soldiers) fought the battles of their British masters for so many years. Ultimately - though it took a very long time - it was they who gave birth to the independence movement, long before it was championed by the general population. The Glass Palace is another great example of a compelling story that manages to educate. It informs readers of important historical events and raises questions each of us ought to consider. I found myself wondering more than once about parallels between events depicted here and present developments in Iraq. Ghosh forces us to think but doesn't make us work to do so. The book is beautifully written; descriptions of Burma capture well the strange dichotomy that characterizes the country even today. Rarely have I finished a book was a greater sense of satisfaction. Very little is left unresolved - and the lovely twist at the end (which I shared above but will decline to explain for fear of giving too much away) is among the slickest conclusions of any novel I've read. << Find this Book on Amazon.com >>
| ![[Book Cover Page: The Glass Palace]](images/books/the-glass-palace.jpg "The Glass Palace")