THE GLASS PALACE

Gradn Prize for Fiction Frankfurt International e-Books Awards

The Glass Palace begins with the shattering of the kingdom of Burma, and tells the story of a people, a fortune, and a family and its fate. It traces the life of Rajkumar, a poor Indian boy, who is lifted on the tides of political and social turmoil to build an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When British soldiers force the royal family out of the glass palace, during the invasion of 1885, he falls in love with Dolly, an attendant at the palace. Years later, unable to forget her, Rajkumar goes in search of his love.

Through this brilliant and impassioned story of love and war, Amitav Ghosh presents a ruthless appraisal of the horrors of colonialism and capitalist exploitation.

‘No one is directly indicted in the novel, not a single person idealized. Yet casually mentioned details get linked across space and time to form haunting patterns, their cumulative effective staying with the reader long after the novel is over. For all its vividness of description and range of human experiences, The Glass Palace will remain for me memorable mainly as the most scathing critique of British colonialism I have ever come across in fiction’ —Meenakshi Mukherjee in The Hindu

‘A rich, layered epic that probes the meaning of identity and homeland—a literary territory that is as resonant now, in our globalized culture, as it was when the sun never set on the British Empire’ —Los Angeles Times Book Review

‘It’s the human interest story of the great Indian diaspora, its loss and longing in the time of war and colonialism’ —India Today

‘The novel outdoes theory as well as history in terms of its subtle treatment of colonialism. The Glass Palace is an instance of novel overtaking history as an authentic and reliable source of understanding the micro-level subtleties of colonial politics’ —The Sunday Tribune