The Glass Palace: Summary and book reviews of The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh, plus links to an excerpt from The Glass Palace and a biography of Amitav Ghosh.
The Glass Palace
by Amitav Ghosh
Hardcover: Feb 2001,
512 pages.
Paperback: Feb 2002,
496 pages.
Brilliant and impassioned, The Glass Palace is a masterly novel by Amitav Ghosh, the gifted novelist Peter Matthiessen has called "an exceptional writer". This superb story of love and war begins with the shattering of the kingdom of Burma and the igniting of a great and passionate love, and it goes on to tell the story of a people, a fortune, and a family and its fate.
The Glass Palace tells of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who creates an empire in the Burmese teak forest. During the British invasion of 1885, when soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, the woman whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her.
Publisher's Weekly
... Ghosh is a beguiling and endlessly resourceful storyteller, and he boasts one of the most arresting openings in recent fiction ...
Library Journal
Ghosh has done well with books like The Calcutta Chromosome, but this multigenerational tale, which evokes the British takeover of Burma, is his first large-scale book.
Chitra Divakaruni
The struggles that have made Burma, India, and Malaya the places they are today are illuminated in this wonderful novel by a master storyteller... A powerful novel with an epic sweep, filled with tender, convincing detail. Ghosh is a master storyteller.
Melvin Jules Bukiet
Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace is like the royal Burmese castle its title refers to exotically expansive, yet filled with intricately-rendered nooks and niches. A century of traumatic subcontinental history provides the architectural background to the intimate details of Ghosh's characters' lives. He conveys all of this with serenity and moral strength in the face of overwhelming turmoil. His book is a singular achievement.
Jonathan Levi
Ghosh writes with the microscope of Charles Dickens and the cinemascope of David Lean.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by alphonsa philip amitav ghosh the glass palace- a brilliant novel A very moving and enlightening novel. Ghosh has done extensive exploration not of one but many countries. its not only brilliant in its style but also in keeping the reader in a fix of whats next? it not only unfolds life of different people from... Read More
Rated of 5
by Kim Balmanno
Amitav Ghosh's novel The Glass Palace is an epic journey through three generations, set in Burma, India and Malay. The characters encapsulate the pain of colonialisation and come to terms with the violence and destructive energy of empire on their... Read More
Beginning on August 9, 1945, in Nagasaki, and ending in a prison cell in the US in 2002, as a man is waiting to be sent to Guantanamo Bay, Burnt Shadows is an epic narrative of love and betrayal.
A brave and revelatory reconnaissance of modern Burma, one of the world's grimmest and most shuttered police states, using as its compass the life and work of George Orwell, the man many in Burma call simply "the prophet"
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Chitra Divakaruni
of 5
by alphonsa philip
of 5
by Kim Balmanno
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