When British troops march into Mandalay in 1885 and exile King Thebaw and Queen Supayalat to the Indian coast, an eleven-year-old Indian orphan named Rajkumar is working at a food stall in the city. In the chaos he glimpses Dolly, a young attendant to the royal family, and the encounter shapes the rest of his life as he rises through the Burmese teak trade.
Amitav Ghosh follows Rajkumar, Dolly and their descendants, along with a Bengali widow named Uma and her family, through rubber plantations in Malaya, the royal exile at Ratnagiri, the Indian Army's dilemmas during the Second World War, and the forced trek out of Burma during the Japanese invasion. Photography and the Indian National Army become important threads in the later generations.
Historical fiction on a grand scale, the novel explores how empire turned Indians into both its servants and its agents, and what loyalty means to soldiers in a colonial army. Ghosh famously withdrew it from the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, objecting to the term Commonwealth literature.
Book details
| Author | Amitav Ghosh |
|---|---|
| First published | 2000 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Historical fiction |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 552 |
| Setting | Mandalay and Rangoon in Burma, Ratnagiri and Calcutta in India, and Malaya, 1885 to 1990s |
Themes
- Empire and colonialism
- Displacement
- Loyalty
- Family saga
- Commerce
Who should read it
Readers who enjoy multigenerational epics and want to understand the shared colonial history of India and Burma.