|
| The Glass Palace | 
 enlarge | Author: Amitav Ghosh
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £7.98 (100%)
New (28) Collectible (1) from £1.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 4856
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 560
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 1.6
ISBN: 000651409X
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780006514091
ASIN: 000651409X
Publication Date: June 18, 2001
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: **UK SHIPPED**SWIFT RELIABLE SERVICE** With friendly customer care! "Buy with confidence, Buy Book EcoLOGICal" Some discolour on page edge.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Not sure about this one... July 31, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I have given this book 3 stars, not as a comment on how well it is written, but on my own personal enjoyment of it. It concerns 3 generations of a family who have links to the last king of Burma, and takes place in Burma and India. It is undoubtedly a well researched and well written book. There just didn't seem to be enough feeling in it, I didn't sympathise with any of the characters and found I didn't really care about them. Perhaps it was just the subject matter......
Absorbing March 9, 2005
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Not a completely flawless book: some episodes seem unattached to the main story, and the very last few pages require a knowledge of post-war Burmese history which is not easy to deduce from the text. But this is a book which wonderfully creates a world - especially Burma and Malaya - of which most readers will know very little. It is a story of three families across three generations of interesting personalities; complex, sometimes strange, often moving. Politics throughout the 20th century impinges on them, and especially interesting is the position of men who had joined the Indian regiments of the British Army and who came to see themselves as mercenaries who held down the Burmese and were used to fight for a British cause against the Japanese. The horrors of the Japanese invasions of Malaya and Burma are also hauntingly described.
 Just read the elephant bits! January 24, 2005
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
For me, a good book makes me feel I know the characters personally, some quite well, some maybe only aquaintances, but each time I pick up the book, I'm visiting them, and catching up with what's been happening in their lives. The characters didn't come alive in The Glass Palace, there is no depth to them. Large chunks of their lives are summarised as we move through the generations.
On the plus side I did learn something about the history and politics of the area, enough to want to know more, but again the story didn't touch me enough emotionally, they always seemed to be just characters in a book and not real people experiencing the chaos and upheaval.
But - when Ghosh writes about the elephants and their trainers, WOW! What a difference! The relationship between man and beast and the trust and respect each has for the other. The chapter about elephants and anthrax was outstanding and does put you through the wringer emotionally. Alas, not enough of the book has you gripped in this way, for it to be a good enough read.
 Totally Absorbing August 6, 2004
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
To me this is a "Buddenbrooks" of South East Asia. It has the same richness of historical and topograhical detail; the same strongly delineated characters over three generations; and the same sense of a sword of Damocles hanging over the family, as bit by bit it disintegrates or ruptures, like the pitiful elephants who have grazed on anthrax. As an Englishman born in post-colonial Malaysia, Ghosh makes me feel ashamed of and, I hope, better able to understand the corrosive power of colonialism, particularly in its purely commercial aspects. Even more important, he is able to communicate the power of deep friendships and attachments over many years and the need for solitude in the face of implacable adversity. I could hardly bear Dolly's valediction to Rajkhumar, but she needed those few months before her death in Sagaing.
Too much covered in too little depth November 12, 2003
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
I started this book with great enthusiasm, looking forward to an in depth tale of 20th century Burma. Instead the book is a weak muddle of three generations' forays between Burma, India and Malaya. It attempts to cover the massively complex issues of the British Empire, the modernisation of Indian society, WWII and numerous political theories. It has none of the cultural & political insights of Eastern culture that a book like Red Dust offers. The reader is left with a very weak understanding of what motivates the book's key characters and an even weaker understanding of the true dynamics of the various issues the book attempts to cover.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
