• Hardcover
• 560
• The Glass Palace
• Amitav Ghosh
• English
• 19 January 2020
• 9780002261029

Amitav Ghosh µ 6 Free download

The Glass Palace Read Ì PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB Set in Burma during the British invasion of 1885 this masterly novel by Amitav Ghosh tells the story of Rajkumar a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese. The Glass Palace Amitav Ghosh Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956 He studied in Dehra Dun New Delhi Alexandria and Oxford and his first job was at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi He earned a doctorate at Oxford before he wrote his first novel which was published in 1986The Glass Palace is a 2000 historical novel by Indian writer Amitav Ghosh The novel is set in Burma Bengal India and Malaya spans a century from the fall of the Konbaung Dynasty in Mandalay through the Second World War to modern times Focusing mainly on the early 20th Century it explores a broad range of issues ranging from the changing economic landscape of Burma and India to pertinent uestions about what constitutes a nation and how these change as society is swept along by the tide of modernity 2006 1381 557 9644423321 20

The Glass Palace Read Ì PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB Teak forest When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile Rajkumar befriends Dolly a young woman in the court of the Burmese ueen whose love will shape his life He cannot forget her and years. Most of the historical fiction books I ve read have tried to do three things evoke a sense of time and place depict historical events through the eyes of their characters and last and often least unfortunately even though this is ostensibly the reason to read a novel in the first place create multifaceted characters who are experiencing their own growth development and plot The best historical fiction books I ve read integrated all three of these goals into a smooth and readable narrative Gone With the Wind for instance Unfortunately much of the historical fiction I ve read has been mediocre and concentrated heavily on the first two goals describing the time and place and following the historical timeline The third goal that of creating an interesting plot and believable characters in their own right rather than simply using them as an excuse to give us the history often falls short This was the case here as wellIf I were really honest I d put this on my couldn t finish shelf because I actually skimmed about 34 of it But since I did in fact push myself all the way to the end I ll give myself a passI started out enjoying this book Ghosh s writing evoked the scene and I wanted to read about the characters and their travails That ended though when things suddenly became choppy and contrived I want this character to get rich Ghosh apparently decided so I ll have him make this deal have the other characters pay some lip service to how risky it is and boom It works out Now thought Ghosh I want these two long lost people to reunite and end up marrying So a uick reunion a summary rejection by the woman and then a dramatic scene where she changes her mind just as he s leaving and has to chase him down Poof They re married Many important events happened this way while other parts of the book were extremely long and draggy unnecessarily so in my opinion Much of the book seemed like an effort to situate the characters in convenient times and places so as to give us some history and promote an anti colonialist agenda Not that I m a fan of colonialism but I m also not a fan of agenda driven novelsI did enjoy the fact that Ghosh focused on an unfamiliar to me setting Burma and made me aware of both its own history and its role in world events And I was interested in the characters and in what would happen to them at first Unfortunately somewhere after p 100 the story started to fall flat for me and then and characters and jumpy subplots were introduced as I found myself less and less motivated to follow themI read Sea of Poppies a later book by Ghosh a while back and really enjoyed it I guess he matured as a writer which is nice In this earlier novel you do see his potential but from what I can see his later work is much better

Summary The Glass Palace

The Glass Palace Read Ì PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB Later as a rich man he goes in search of her The struggles that have made Burma India and Malaya the places they are today are illuminated in this wonderful novel by the writer Chitra Divakaruni calls a master storytelle. The Glass Palace is a story which grows on the reader gradually the characters who at first seem like well constructed caricatures begin to resonate their lives passions trials and tribulations draw the reader in as they become increasingly invested in the exploration of the history three generations of a Indo Burmese familyThe story begins in the final days of pre colonial Burma as the enterprising young orphan Rajkumar begins his rise to wealth that this rise is largely based on exploitation and a kind of swaggering bravado is a result of the opportunities which Rajkumar had available to him in a colonial system which is based on exploitation and subjugation the only way to succeed financially is to ape the mannerisms and methods of the colonialists This is not to excuse Rajkumar s actions but to offer an explanation Indeed one of the core themes of the book is that of actions and morality rather than offer a simplistic view of morality Ghosh colours his characters actions with varying shades of grey from the mutiny of Arjan whose bluster and good will gradually dissolve in the dehumanisation of war to Uma whose supercilious demeanour belies her passionate humanism Ghosh expertly weaves a rich tapestry of motivations behind the actions of the charactersThe other key theme of the novel is colonialism as one of the characters Dinu states Did we ever have a hope We rebelled against an empire that has shaped everything in our lives coloured everything in the world as we know it It is a huge indelible stain which has tainted all of us We cannot destroy it without destroying ourselves The characters inhabit a world in which the insurmountable weight of colonialism holds them down whether it is fighting a war which isn t theirs or seeing themselves via the prism of subjugation where they are to their oppressors at least barely half human However despite colonialism being a key theme in the novel The Glass Palace Ghosh does not allow this to limit the richness of the inner lives of the characters Instead he is able to colour their relationship from the failed marriage of The Collector and Uma based on The Collector s desire to have a liberal and westernised wife in a world where women where women were barely granted any freedoms or between Rajkumar and Dolly who gradually build their love or between Dinu and Alison who gradually becomes attracted to Dinu s diffident almost effeminate ualities after a brief liaison with the boisterous Arjan The Glass Palace is fundamentally a novel about human relationships and love of the slow unravelling of memory in the passage of time of the lives of characters which were bound to be lost but for some innocuous photographs which were able to capture their all too brief existence