The Glass Palace
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The Glass Palace
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Narrated by:
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Ranjit Madgavkar
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By:
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Amitav Ghosh
About this listen
'An absorbing story of a world in transition’ JM Coetzee
'A Doctor Zhivago for the Far East' The Independent
Rajkumar is only another boy, helping on a market stall in the dusty square outside the royal palace, when the British force the Burmese King, Queen and all the Court into exile. He is rescued by the far-seeing Chinese merchant, and with him builds up a logging business in upper Burma. But haunted by his vision of the Royal Family, he journeys to the obscure town in India where they have been exiled.
The story follows the fortunes – rubber estates in Malaya, businesses in Singapore, estates in Burma – which Rajkumar, with his Chinese, British and Burmese relations, friends and associates, builds up – from 1870 through the Second World War to the scattering of the extended family to New York and Thailand, London and Hong Kong in the post-war years.
©2023 Amitav Ghosh (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"A tantalising meditation… richly complex and satisfying." (Sunday Times)
"A distinctive voice, polished and profound." (TLS)
Terrible narration, fantastic novel
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The reading is clear and varied enough to maintain interest throughout what I experienced as a novel in need of abridgement. The plot is very complex and it is essential to be able to remember who is who, and the place of each in the families and it is only the very well crafted interweaving of the stories that maintained my interest, and here the reader must take s great deal of credit.
In my opinion this book may stand alongside ‘war and peace’ for its impact and the beauty of its characterisation, but, like Tolstoy’s masterpiece, it requires commitment and determination to follow in places, and the end for me is perhaps the weakest part of the book which is so often the case with these very long sagas. If the author ran out if puffas it were, before the end, he may have considered finishing the story earlier: his near worship of Angson Suchi dates the whole novel and reads rather sadly today.
Perhaps the most important thing to say in a review like this is that I shall almost certainly read the book again
Beautifully written and read
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