The Glass Palace

The Glass Palace, by Amitav Ghosh, is the epic story of three generations of Indo-Burmese and Malaysian families, beginning with the fall of Mandalay to the British and ending with a powerful but rather simplistic image of Aung San Suu Kyi as a symbol of hope for future Burma. Ghosh’s evocation of King Thebaw and Queen Supayalat’s exile in India and his rendering of intimate relationships among lovers, husbands and wives, and families definitely pulls the old heart-strings, but lacks complexity. The book was compelling, however, as it filled many gaps in my knowledge of Indo-Burmese history.

Ghosh’s research must have been epic, and most of his knowledge is seamlessly woven into his narrative. Accompanied by the botanical relatives of teak, the work habits of elephants, and the horrible ravages of anthrax, we enter the world of colonial Burma with her rich mix of ethnicities and slow-growing tensions. It is wonderful to watch how Rajkumar, the lead character travels to India and finds his beloved, the beautiful, controlled Dolly. But when it comes to love relationships, the novel is shamelessly romantic; even the most misty-eyed reader will get tired of too many "she was the-most-beautiful/attractive/breathtaking woman he had ever seen" lines.

As the novel crosses more territory, stretches across yet another decade, it grows thin, until the seams are as visible as the author’s hand, moving his people about like chess pieces. Sometimes we can believe these manipulations; other times we cannot. For example, Dolly would surely have let Rajkumar know when she found their disappeared second son back in Burma, still alive. But the last part of the book is built on the precarious platform of his continued absence, and his niece’s inspired search for him, in her own journey to Burma and an entirely different kind of glass palace. There are other similar narrative problems that weaken the novel.

Even as I write about the novel’s weaknesses, I feel compelled to repeat how much I liked the book. For example, the last scene of the novel is a monument to that strange human complexity that was missing in so many other places. I would wish Amitav Ghosh to sit in the heart of the manuscript for two or three more years, rewriting, reliving, fermenting in his own characters’ lives, perfecting the details in this work of broad and ambitious movement. Then he would have his own glass palace, an utterly brilliant work of literature.