Amitav Ghosh spent his childhood in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and northern India and was educated in Delhi, Oxford and Egypt. His fourth novel, The Hungry Tide, is out in paperback.

About the book

Rajkumar is only another 11-year-old boy, helping on a market stall in the dusty square outside the royal palace, when the British imperial forces send the Burmese King, Queen and all the Court into exile. He is taken up by a 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 Glass Palace is a masterful novel of love, war and family and presents us with a band of memorable characters, spread across Burma, Malaya and India, and across three generations — before the door to Burma closes behind them, and the glittering light of that civilisation seems extinguished.

Extract

“There was only one person in the food-stall who knew exactly what that sound was that was rolling in across the plain, along the silver curve of the Irrawaddy, to the western wall of Mandalay’s fort. His name was Rajkumar and he was an Indian, a boy of 11 — not an authority to be relied upon.”

“The noise was unfamiliar and unsettling, a distant booming followed by low, stuttering growls. At times it was like the snapping of dry twigs, sudden and unexpected. And then, abruptly, it would change to a deep rumble, shaking the food-stall and rattling its steaming pot of soup. When the first booms reached the stall there was a silence, followed by a flurry of questions and whispered answers. People looked around in bewilderment: What is it? And then Rajkumar’s sharp, excited voice cut through the buzz of speculation. ‘English cannon,’ he said, in his fluent but heavily accented Burmese. ‘They’re shooting somewhere up the river. Heading in this direction’.”

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