Its settings range from the rubber plantations of Malaysia, to the Burmese teak forests and the bustling cityscape of Rangoon and Singapore.
In the remainder of the book Amitav Ghosh traces their life together in Burma, India and Malaysia, their ambitions and disappointments and the fluctuating fortunes of their children and grand-children.Ĭlearly this is a family saga on a grand scale. When his position is secure as the head of teak trading empire, he goes in search of her in her new home with the exiled royals in India. She stays in his mind and his heart throughout the following years as he slowly builds a business in wood logging. He befriends Dolly, one of the young women in the queen’s entourage and guides her to safety. Rajkumar, a poor orphaned Burmese boy, finds himself in the royal palace on the day in 1885 when British soldiers storm the gates and forcibly evict the royal household. It’s the human dimension that grabs our attention as the book opens. In The Glass Palace Amitav Ghosh takes us on a journey across cultures and generations, navigating some significant milestones in history but never losing sight of the people who loved, laughed and cried through political upheaval, invasion and war. The comparatively gentle beginning contrasts with later depictions of war and violence and the two elements to the work combine to paint a picture both melancholic and uplifting.Three families. Juxtaposed with folk tales, chaos and violence dominate as the twentieth century brings new challenges and hardships. International events wreak untold damage on Burma as it is catapulted on to the international stage and it becomes clear that the medieval traditions upon which the country's culture is based cannot compete with the organisational discipline and superior technology of the Western world. It is worth persevering and reaching the depths of the narrative after a couple of hundred pages, the book begins to quicken its pace. Parentless, but with a strong guiding force in his mentor, Saya John, Rajkumar starts to make a life for himself, his new wife and young family. The pair are married and settle in Burma.
His success as a trader in teak (the lucrative motivation behind the British invasion) is achieved with apparently little effort, and Rajkumar journeys across India to find Dolly, a woman he met as a child in Mandalay. The story gets off to a slow start: Ghosh re-creates Rajkumar's childhood in an almost fairy-tale way.
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