Book Review : The Glass Palace

" The Glass Palace" is by Amitav Ghosh, an Indian writer born to Burmese parents. This is a historical novel and that is something that attracted me to pick this up. Another one was the fact that it had a palace in the title and from an earlier post you can see how much I like that!

The book begins with the capture of the Burmese kingdom by the British and the story of the Royal family. With the capture, the royal family is sent on exile to Ratnagiri, a small town near Goa in India.

The story essentially runs as a foreground background duo, with the world affairs, right from the exile, to the world war continuing onto the current modernized era. The author narrates the story of various characters in the foreground. Rajkumar is a young orphaned indian boy who lives in Burma. He spots Dolly, one of the royal family assistants during the riots followed by the capture of the Burmese Kingdom. He instantly falls in love with her.. then she goes to India to live with the Royal family and he goes on to make a living in Burma. They eventually meet through a friend and get married. The story is about all characters before and after their marriage and the intricacies of their lives.

I liked the book for many good reasons - its depth into another culture, the history of it so well articulated. I also liked the book for the multiple dimensions that it goes into ... Olden time Burma, Political connections, British rule in India, Independence movement, the Indian Army and even simple lives of commoners. The author gave me the impression of a very well travelled and well educated person. The story was never unconnected at any point and it was quite captivating in all.

Although I did like to read about a different culture, many words and references, that were pertinent to that culture were not elaborated. It almost assumed your basic knowledge about these and I completely lack those ( I slept through world history in school:)). Sometimes I also found chapters needlessly verbose and elaborate.

Disregarding the two minor points mentioned above, I would recommend this book for anyone who has some patience and love for history and culture.