The Glass Palace; by Amitav Ghosh.

One cannot but think of various writers and their styles in reading this - Khaled Hosseini for one (are they of the same school of writing, did they attend a class together, one wonders) and to some extent Pearl S. Buck for another. She wrote about China and US, her two nations, and wrote more than one saga describing history of the place with more than one generation in the forefront of the story. There is also a reminding of Maugham when one comes to the part about Malaya, but only because of the plantations, there is no other similarity there of course.

The value of this work is in the fact that it does describe in detail some of the history of the parts of the world that are globally mostly forgotten.

Somewhere during the exodus of the Burmese royals one begins to wonder why the writer would use names of known places in the story and checking on the note from the author at the end gives a clue - it is based on history. But then, the characters of the collector and so forth are detailed, and one begins to have a growing sense of it all being a family tale of someone who looked up his various relatives and wrote, only to read a disclaimer at the end to the effect that only the royals are real figures - this could have been mentioned in first few pages, say after the title page and before the story begins, as is often practice.

Anyhow, the story is gripping, mostly because of the historical details of of an era much written about but not dealing with the parts of the world this one covers (except for works of W.S.Maugham) in most known literature. The characters are sketched well in spite of the racy nature - the story covers over six decades of events in southern Asia, by which I do not mean the euphemistic term South Asia used to cover up the fact that that is only a name now used to indicate what was India; here the events take one extensively in Burma and Malaya (today Malaysia) and parts of India in east and west.

One sees the underbelly of the empire that the sun never set on, and the shoddy treatment of the subjects especially during times of humongous stress - when the war tide is turning against the British, the soldiers are expected to nevertheless fight on for the empire but the non European civilians are not allowed on the one train out of Malaya for evacuation to safety, just one example.

(Here is another fact about the said empire and its claim - something not mentioned in this story, but a fact of history. Allied soldiers behaved exemplary fashion in occupied Germany but not quite so during war in empire colonies with the civilians, a fact known to locals but not admitted much less publicised in general, and Amitav - pronounced Amitabh - makes no mention of it and for that matter might or might not have a clue about it either, in that there were casual rapes of innocent civilians by soldiers of allied forces with no redress from the authorities, a fact that belies the "obligation to protect" claim of the empire rulers completely. If the subjects were uncomfortable complaining to the rulers about such atrocities performed by allied non-local soldiers due to the racial preferences meted to the soldiers who were racially of the rulers' side, then the empire had gained no trust whatsoever from the ruled, clearly.)

From the heartrending exile of the Burmese royal family to the long march of the protection denied civilians from Malaya to Burma to India, and the later travails of the Burmese people under the repressive regime, it all touches heart - except where the author for no reason whatsoever finds it obligatory to give shoddy details of lower physical or sexual nature, which this tale could very well have done without. Often one gets the clear sense that he is unable to settle in comfort with his identity and would like to be one with the neighbours of his choice, western and sahib, except the ghost of his real identity won't let him rest - and so he exploits the heritage to write engrossing tales such as this but attempts to keep his own head above it by subtle mistakes of spellings or pronounciations such as made by callous rulers of colonies who deliberately steamrollered over ruled subjects in various matters (including temples razed to build roads or railway stations, temples of major import too) just so he can keep on the right side of the world population generally.

At the end, when one finishes reading the end of the story of several generations over the huge expanse of nations and turns to the author's note only to read that it was mostly fictional characters, which one has come to believe with growing certainty due to details of unnecessary nature if it was indeed so, one begins to wonder why he would attempt to discredit the work from both directions - if it was all fiction it could certainly have been done far better, and if it was not why claim it so? One wonders if the claimed fictionality of characters is only to protect the relatives he exposes with a determination for sake of a shoddy lot of details given unnecessarily and mud thrown that he would not like to be taken to court for or be looked at with contempt by his people for, the mud thrown at his own to attempt being accepted by his chosen people as once some had to do by eating forbidden stuff but is no longer enough. All in all, if only he had avoided that shoddy part and temptation to thus make it dirty in an unattractive way, he could avoid making statements about the fictionality of characters when the events are so real and the whole work not quite literature, not quite history but bordering on the verge where its only worth is by virtue of being historical tale; on the other hand perhaps the multiple veils thus drawn over the tale allow the author to keep a semblance of success in the attempted impossible of belonging to rulers and ruled simultaneously, for as long as he can keep a foot each in two very diverse boats.