The Glass Palace: Amitav Ghosh

The Glass Palace is the 4th novel by Amitav Ghosh. No doubt, it is a different and a very contemplative book which revolves around a different range of issues from the problems of british colonization, the changing economies of Burma and India, IInd world war, the changing landscapes, the change to modernity etc

The protagonist is a small Indian orphan boy called Raj kumar and the novel starts in the city of Mandalay with the fall of the royal empire in Burma. Then the novel heads towards the royal family’s migration to Madras, and then Ratnagiri, then the story turns to Rangoon, world war II then further to Japanese invasion on Malaya and Burma and it ends with the description of the lives of the scattered families!

The story is no doubt solid and even the narration is amazing. The author has explained each and every incident in detail but this novel is too large to read. In between, many a times, it becomes very boring and you actually have to skip certain parts! And its so annoying to read novels by skipping certain chapters! You lose your half interest there. The rest half goes off while reading about so many characters. Guess there are more than 20 characters in the novel and it becomes extremely difficult to remember all of them probably because its such an enormous novel!

I would not recommend it to all. It is only for the people who love to read big novels, which are very descriptive and thoughtful with a lot of characters, incidents etc.

Rating: 2/5

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