As a crowd of looters pours into the fabled Glass Palace, the dazzling throne room of the nine-roofed golden spire that was the great hti of Burma's kings, Rajkumar catches sight of Dolly, then only 10, nursemaid to the Second Princess. The year is 1885, and the British have used a trade dispute to justify the invasion and seizure of Burma's capital. Yet Ghosh (The Calcutta Chromosome Shadow Lines) is a beguiling and endlessly resourceful storyteller, and he boasts one of the most arresting openings in recent fiction: in the marketplace of Mandalay, only the 11-year-old Indian boy Rajkumar recognizes the booming sounds beyond the curve of the river as English cannon fire. There is almost too much here for one book, as over the years the lives and deaths of principal characters go flying by. Ghosh's epic novel of Burma and Malaya over a span of 115 years is the kind of ""sweep of history"" that readers can appreciateDeven loveDdespite its demands.
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