shabby blog

Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Glass Palace

I've just finished reading The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh. It is such an engaging read. It fills me with a sense of connection to the land of my birth, which i do not usually feel an affinity to except through lore and stories of my parents lives and experiences in the Good ole days of Burma. This book gave me another perspective, a more historical, ominiscient view of life and history in Burma. And how greater, outside forces(colonialism,WWII) changed and warped the lives of the characters set throughout Burma, Malaya and India but primarily in Burma.
I like the way he writes about the romance between the characters, especially that between Rajkumar and Dolly and Dinu and Alison. It's how they're intertwined with the important historical and political movements throughout the setting of the story and he makes it seem slapdashly relatable, believable and genuine. Ill write a proper review later...for now im sleepy but i just felt i had to comment on it. Cant wait to read books about colonialism along the same lines, maybe ill try VS Naipaul, Joseph Conrad and Tolstoy.

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