The Glass Palace

Author: Amitav GhoshPublisher: Ravi Dayal & Permanent BlackYear: 2000Language: EnglishPages: 552ISBN/UPC (if available): 8175300310 DescriptionThe author of The Shadow Lines has come up with a monumental work of the historical imagination.The Glass Palace is an epic novel written with unerring skill. It grasps the reach and fall of empires across the twentieth century, even as it maps the geographies of the human heart. Amitav Ghosh, India's most consistently impressive English novelist, has surpassed himself here.Outside the royal palace at Mandalay, a small Indian boy Rajkumar is helping to run a dhaba. He hears the ominous boom of distant guns; he picks up rumors of a conquering British force; he watches panic furrow they faces of customers . . And sooner than anyone can comprehend, the ancient capital of Burma is in chaos.The British conquest of Burma unfolds before Rajkumar's petrified eyes. The kind, the queen, and their retinue are exiled to Ratnagiri in western India.