An Analysis Of Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace From A Historical Perspective

Abstract

The novel The Glass Palace is about three generations of two families in Burmese, India and Malaya. It is a historical novel about the British colonization of Burma. In this novel, Ghosh reveals the brutal greed of the people at various levels. The plunder of the opening scene shows the greed of the colonizer. The fourth novel by Amitav Ghosh opens on the eve of war in Mandalay, as the British prepare to capture the Burmese throne. An eleven-year-old Indian orphan named Rajkumar informs a crowd at a food stall that the booming sound they hear is British cannon. The year is 1885, and a dispute between a British timber company and King Thebaw of Burma leads to battle. The Burmese army, defeated after only fourteen days by a force of ten thousand British and Indian soldiers, surrendered without informing the king.