Tuesday, February 5, 2008

The Glass Palace discussion Feb. 7th

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet this Thursday, Feb. 7th to discuss The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh.

I've enjoyed reading this book which has turned out to be a little lengthy for me - almost 500 pages! The story about the British invasion of Burma, the exile of the Burmese king and queen and the tales of the intertwining lives of three Burmese and Indian families over a century of history is genuinely riveting, although I could have lived without the excessive details of the cars of the period. The novel offers an important, alternative view of events from the native inhabitants of those countries during the reign of England during their colonial years.

If you're interested in delving a little deeper into the story, I found some websites that offer material worth your time:

An interesting blog discussion of colonial literature and post-colonial literature and their designations as such:
http://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2004/05/question-for-discussion-marketing-and.html

A discussion of the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar:
http://arbitrarymarks.com/wordpress/2007/09/28/covering-myanmar/

A fun story of Amitav Ghosh’s bookstore appearance in the Oxford Bookstore:
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mp/2003/08/11/stories/2003081101030100.htm

Discussion questions for the novel can be found on the Publisher's (Random House) website:
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375758775&view=rg