Year of first publication: 2000
Genre: novel, historical novel, family saga
Country: India (the author is Indian, but the novel also has strands in Burma and Malaysia)
In italiano: Il Palazzo degli Specchi di Amitav Ghosh, edito da Neri Pozza (2007), € 14,00
Plot: The novel begins in Mandalay, Burma, in 1885, when the British are about to seize the city with a powerful army of Indian sepoys. The Burmese royal family will be sent into exile in a small Indian village and the royal palace ravaged. Rajkumar, a Bengali orphan boy, has a chance to enter the “glass palace” during the chaos following the fall of the Ava Kingdom, and there he meets one of Queen Supayalat’s maid servants, a breathtakingly-beautiful young girl called Dolly. Rajkumar will make a fortune with teak and finally marry her. In the meantime, the royal family is “incarcerated” by the British in a place called Ratnagiri, on the western coast of India, almost forgotten by the Burmese and everyone else. They make friends with their jailers nonetheless: Uma Dey, the District Collector’s wife, and Dolly become close friends. When her husband dies, Uma reinvents herself as an activist for Indian independence and has a chance to travel to Europe and America. Another strand follows Uma’s nephew Arjun, a dedicated officer in the British Indian Army, who has a conversion and starts to fight for India’s own side after realizing the contradictions of being a colonial and fighting for the British. The novel follows three generations and three families across borders, giving us a multi-layered portrait of colonial and post-colonial India, Burma and Malaysia. The novel spans more than one hundred years, finally ending in the 1990s, when Rajkumar’s grand-daughter Jaya embarks on an internet search to find her long-lost uncle Dinu, who now lives in Rangoon. Burma, now called Myanmar, is no longer the “golden country” it used to be: bad politics, famines and the selfishness of its rulers have turned it into an impoverished land, where the military junta has seized the power and incarcerated opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Some thoughts: This is a superb and unique novel. There is so much in this book that I don’t know where to start. It’s a book that will stay with me for a long time. Once again Ghosh confirms his gift for storytelling, giving life to unforgettable characters such as Rajkumar, Uma or Dolly.
He demonstrates that South East Asia in the 19th and early 20th century could be as multicultural as cities like New York or London are today. Ghosh’s novel has nothing to envy from multiracial family sagas set in the late 1990s or early 2000s as written by Zadie Smith or Hanif Kureishi. Rajkumar is a Bengali-born peasant who makes his fortune in Burma and feels more at home in Mandalay or Rangoon than in Calcutta, whereas Dolly is an attendant of the royal family, a Burmese by birth who ends up feeling more at ease in India than in Burma. Saya John, Rajkumar’s mentor in the teak trade, is a Malay raised by Catholic priests, whereas Uma is an upper middle-class Indian widow who lives between New York and the subcontinent. Their nephews, children and grand-children Neel, Dinu, Arjun, Manju and Alison are part Indian, part Burmese, part Malay and part American. All of these characters cross borders between countries and social classes, having multiple identities that Ghosh loves to explore. Rajkumar’s rags to riches story is only an example of social mobility in the novel, but there are many others (for example Mohan Sawant, a coachman, who ends up marrying one of the exiled princesses, but keeps leading a modest life). Ghosh wants to demonstrate how common it was at that time to float between borders of social class (the novel is obviously highly-researched). The theme of multiculturalism and social mobility in the British Raj is also featured in Sea of Poppies, Ghosh’s latest novel.
A lot is devoted to reflections on British colonialism in South East Asia. For example, when Uma criticizes Dolly for her faith in Queen Supalayat because she is believed to have had a lot of people killed, Dolly answers that she is scared by the picture of Queen Victoria hung at Uma’s, instead. She reminds her friend of how many people have been killed in the name of Queen Victoria. Uma starts to be more conscious about the injustices of the British rule while she is travelling abroad. Initially, her point of view is that of the Indian Independence League, but later in the novel she becomes a supporter of “the velvet glove”, that is to say a supporter of Gandhi. Her nephew Arjun has a slower transformation from officer of the British Indian Army to revolutionary fighter for the independence of India. Ghosh details the doubts of Arjun’s fellow soldiers: they swore to be loyal to their country but which one is their country, India or the British Empire? They resent the fact that they are sent to Malaysia to defend the British Empire, which prevents them from defending India, their own country. Uma debates with Rajkumar’s youngest son, Dinu: shall India fight in the Second World War with the British and against the Nazi or shall India fight only with a concrete promise of self-rule? Uma thinks that fascism and colonialism are both evil and she doesn’t see much difference between them. Uma and Arjun’s transformation equals that of Indian people from subjugated colonials to fully independent members of a big democratic nation.
The Glass Palace is an ambitious novel, with vivid descriptions and complex characters. It has a “gloss” of history without being boring or difficult and it’s multi-layered, packed with details and undoubtedly cinematic. It has some minor flaws nonetheless. Sometimes Ghosh alternates tales of war and distress with accounts of sappy relationships including sex scenes on the beach, falling into the stereotypes of Bollywood movies too often. Towards the end it feels like it’s several novels edited into one (I think it’s inevitable when you write such a long book, unless your name is Lev Tolstoj!). Ghosh is not able to leave his characters to their faith, telling us exactly what happened to each one of them. Sometimes years pass in a paragraph and characters who where children are suddenly grown up. Also, the ending is a bit rushed and sloppy: Ghosh wants to comment on the current situation in Myanmar, where the democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi is at house arrest, but it all feels a bit too sketchy, also considering the details crammed in the rest of the novel.
Something curious and albeit interesting about The Glass Palace: the book was a regional winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, but Ghosh, unaware that the publishers had submitted his book, withdrew the novel from the competition, objecting to the idea of his work being classified as “Commonwealth literature” when the prize is only open to books written in English. By doing this, he didn’t betray the spirit of the novel, which criticizes British colonialism quite harshly.
Genre: novel, historical novel, family saga
Country: India (the author is Indian, but the novel also has strands in Burma and Malaysia)
In italiano: Il Palazzo degli Specchi di Amitav Ghosh, edito da Neri Pozza (2007), € 14,00
Plot: The novel begins in Mandalay, Burma, in 1885, when the British are about to seize the city with a powerful army of Indian sepoys. The Burmese royal family will be sent into exile in a small Indian village and the royal palace ravaged. Rajkumar, a Bengali orphan boy, has a chance to enter the “glass palace” during the chaos following the fall of the Ava Kingdom, and there he meets one of Queen Supayalat’s maid servants, a breathtakingly-beautiful young girl called Dolly. Rajkumar will make a fortune with teak and finally marry her. In the meantime, the royal family is “incarcerated” by the British in a place called Ratnagiri, on the western coast of India, almost forgotten by the Burmese and everyone else. They make friends with their jailers nonetheless: Uma Dey, the District Collector’s wife, and Dolly become close friends. When her husband dies, Uma reinvents herself as an activist for Indian independence and has a chance to travel to Europe and America. Another strand follows Uma’s nephew Arjun, a dedicated officer in the British Indian Army, who has a conversion and starts to fight for India’s own side after realizing the contradictions of being a colonial and fighting for the British. The novel follows three generations and three families across borders, giving us a multi-layered portrait of colonial and post-colonial India, Burma and Malaysia. The novel spans more than one hundred years, finally ending in the 1990s, when Rajkumar’s grand-daughter Jaya embarks on an internet search to find her long-lost uncle Dinu, who now lives in Rangoon. Burma, now called Myanmar, is no longer the “golden country” it used to be: bad politics, famines and the selfishness of its rulers have turned it into an impoverished land, where the military junta has seized the power and incarcerated opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Some thoughts: This is a superb and unique novel. There is so much in this book that I don’t know where to start. It’s a book that will stay with me for a long time. Once again Ghosh confirms his gift for storytelling, giving life to unforgettable characters such as Rajkumar, Uma or Dolly.
He demonstrates that South East Asia in the 19th and early 20th century could be as multicultural as cities like New York or London are today. Ghosh’s novel has nothing to envy from multiracial family sagas set in the late 1990s or early 2000s as written by Zadie Smith or Hanif Kureishi. Rajkumar is a Bengali-born peasant who makes his fortune in Burma and feels more at home in Mandalay or Rangoon than in Calcutta, whereas Dolly is an attendant of the royal family, a Burmese by birth who ends up feeling more at ease in India than in Burma. Saya John, Rajkumar’s mentor in the teak trade, is a Malay raised by Catholic priests, whereas Uma is an upper middle-class Indian widow who lives between New York and the subcontinent. Their nephews, children and grand-children Neel, Dinu, Arjun, Manju and Alison are part Indian, part Burmese, part Malay and part American. All of these characters cross borders between countries and social classes, having multiple identities that Ghosh loves to explore. Rajkumar’s rags to riches story is only an example of social mobility in the novel, but there are many others (for example Mohan Sawant, a coachman, who ends up marrying one of the exiled princesses, but keeps leading a modest life). Ghosh wants to demonstrate how common it was at that time to float between borders of social class (the novel is obviously highly-researched). The theme of multiculturalism and social mobility in the British Raj is also featured in Sea of Poppies, Ghosh’s latest novel.
A lot is devoted to reflections on British colonialism in South East Asia. For example, when Uma criticizes Dolly for her faith in Queen Supalayat because she is believed to have had a lot of people killed, Dolly answers that she is scared by the picture of Queen Victoria hung at Uma’s, instead. She reminds her friend of how many people have been killed in the name of Queen Victoria. Uma starts to be more conscious about the injustices of the British rule while she is travelling abroad. Initially, her point of view is that of the Indian Independence League, but later in the novel she becomes a supporter of “the velvet glove”, that is to say a supporter of Gandhi. Her nephew Arjun has a slower transformation from officer of the British Indian Army to revolutionary fighter for the independence of India. Ghosh details the doubts of Arjun’s fellow soldiers: they swore to be loyal to their country but which one is their country, India or the British Empire? They resent the fact that they are sent to Malaysia to defend the British Empire, which prevents them from defending India, their own country. Uma debates with Rajkumar’s youngest son, Dinu: shall India fight in the Second World War with the British and against the Nazi or shall India fight only with a concrete promise of self-rule? Uma thinks that fascism and colonialism are both evil and she doesn’t see much difference between them. Uma and Arjun’s transformation equals that of Indian people from subjugated colonials to fully independent members of a big democratic nation.
The Glass Palace is an ambitious novel, with vivid descriptions and complex characters. It has a “gloss” of history without being boring or difficult and it’s multi-layered, packed with details and undoubtedly cinematic. It has some minor flaws nonetheless. Sometimes Ghosh alternates tales of war and distress with accounts of sappy relationships including sex scenes on the beach, falling into the stereotypes of Bollywood movies too often. Towards the end it feels like it’s several novels edited into one (I think it’s inevitable when you write such a long book, unless your name is Lev Tolstoj!). Ghosh is not able to leave his characters to their faith, telling us exactly what happened to each one of them. Sometimes years pass in a paragraph and characters who where children are suddenly grown up. Also, the ending is a bit rushed and sloppy: Ghosh wants to comment on the current situation in Myanmar, where the democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi is at house arrest, but it all feels a bit too sketchy, also considering the details crammed in the rest of the novel.
Something curious and albeit interesting about The Glass Palace: the book was a regional winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, but Ghosh, unaware that the publishers had submitted his book, withdrew the novel from the competition, objecting to the idea of his work being classified as “Commonwealth literature” when the prize is only open to books written in English. By doing this, he didn’t betray the spirit of the novel, which criticizes British colonialism quite harshly.
Ghosh also wrote a non-fiction book, Incendiary Circumstances: A Cronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times (2006) where there is an essay on Burma called "At Large in Burma". Here he writes about an uncle who used to live in Burma and was probably the inspiration for one of the characters in the book.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAnche a me questo libro è piaciuto immensamente. E' stato veramente interessante leggere una Storia che non conoscevo, semplicemente perché era la stessa storia che conoscevo, ma vista con gli occhi dei colonizzati.
ReplyDeleteTutta la riflessione sul colonialismo e sui vari rapporti che ognuno sceglie, o non sceglie, di avere è secondo me molto importante.
L'inizio del libro per me è anche la parte più bella, e sono d'accordo che il romanzo ha qualche debolezza nel collegare tutte queste storie diverse e disperse nello spazio e nel tempo, in particolare ho trovato alcuni pezzi di raccordo, tipo "riassuntini delle puntate precedenti", in cui racconta velocemente che cosa è successo a un personaggio negli ultimi 10 anni non del tutto convincenti.
Ma comunque è un bellissimo romanzo!
Sì, anche secondo me è un bellissimo romanzo. La seconda guerra mondiale dal punto di vista degli asiatici non è facile da trovare, almeno in un libro di narrativa.
ReplyDeleteSai qual è un difetto di questi scrittori indiani prolissi? Forse non hanno un buon editore che gli dica dove tagliuzzare e riaggiustare. Ho pensato la stessa cosa anche in "Sacred Games" nei capitoli chiamati "Insights", bellissimi e molto interessanti ma che spezzano la narrativa e allungano il romanzo di almeno 100 pagine. E 100 pagine senza il nostro amico con-turbante sono lunghe!
Però io d'altro canto a queste prolissità e digressioni al di fuori della storia ci sono affezionata. Anzi forse è proprio per questo che mi piacciono gli scrittori indiani.
ReplyDeleteNel caso del Palazzo degli specchi, secondo me questi riassuntini rompono un ritmo che è di ampio respiro perché sono scritti in modo più frettoloso: o li tagliava o doveva svilupparli di più (mi dirai: ancora di più? già il libro è lunghissimo!).
In molti lamentano le Insights di Sacred games, a me invece sono piaciute molto, perché danno uno spessore più profondo ai personaggi e creano anche un po' di pausa in una storia alquanto concitata (e poi perché le digressioni mi piacciono...).
Certo star lontano dal Sartaj è dura, però poi quando ritorna si è ancora più contenti!
Ho letto proprio ieri che anche i film di Bollywood hanno delle digressioni e side-stories simili a quelle di "Giochi Sacri" e questo non deriva dal fatto che gli indiani sono prolissi, come pensavo io, ma dal Mahabharata che all'interno della narrazione ne ha a bizzeffe di divagazioni! Di conseguenza cinema e letteratura hanno avuto questa influenza per noi così strana, noi che abbiamo letterature dalle storie più o meno lineari. Molto interessante!
ReplyDeleteA proposito di Mahabharata, ho appena finito di vedere il film di Peter Brook, finalmente! Mi è piaciuto, ma vorrei leggere qualche recensione critica. Ci sono un paio di punti che mi sono risultati oscuri o trattati solo superficialmente, anche all'interno della narrazione ridotta all'osso rispetto all'originale. Per esempio, non mi è chiaro il ruolo di Krishna. E' un dio che sbaglia, che consiglia in modo errato i suoi "protettori", pieno di difetti come gli dei classici, oppure è un dio che vuole mettere alla prova l'uomo (Arjuna e compagnia bella) constatandone i difetti e i pregi?
Direi che questa cosa delle digressioni fa parte della cultura indiana, ma anche a livello di cultura intesa come modo di vita, non solo come cultura letteraria.
ReplyDeleteQuando uno si mette a parlare non finisce più, con tutte le digressioni che fa! La linearità sicuramente non è un valore...
Sicuramente nell'epica ciò è evidentissimo.
Per quanto riguarda Krishna, non ho capito bene neanche io, ma ti posso dire che siamo anche qui nel campo della prevedibilità degli occidentali. :-)
Tutti quelli che vedono il Mahabharata si fanno questa domanda (io per prima!): in effetti, per la nostra concezione di dio Krishna fa delle cose che "non andrebbero fatte".
Quando l'ho chiesta a vari indiani, mi hanno risposto: "ah, tutti gli occidentali la pensano così, ma non vedo il punto: Krishna inganna, e allora? perché non dovrebbe?"
Per adesso ho solo letto la critica citata dalla pagina di wikipedia sul Mahabharata di Peter Brook scritta da tale Pradip Bhattacharya:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.boloji.com/cinema/028htm
Ovviamente, essendo l'autore del saggio un indiano, la critica è molto dura. Dice, appunto, che l'autore ha mal interpretato molte cose del racconto, in particolare riguardo a Krishna e alle molte sfaccettature del concetto di Dharma. Molto spesso non si capiscono le motivazioni dei personaggi (per esempio perché Duryodhana ce l'ha a morte con Draupadi). La versione di Peter Brook sarebbe insomma un tentativo fallito da parte di un occidentale di capire una cosa che è distantissima dal nostro punto di vista. East is east and west is west? Ma siamo proprio così inabilitati a capire le filosofie, le religioni e le letterature indiane? Mah, io spererei di no!
Poi tesse le lodi di una sola attrice, ovviamente quella che interpreta Draupadi... e come poteva non essere così? E' praticamente l'unica indiana nel cast principale! A parte gli scherzi, Draupadi ha i capelli fluenti che poi lava nel sangue di Dushasana sventrato da Bhima (quest'ultimo sembra un po' un idiota in questa versione, questo lo aggiungo io!), scena memorabile, è vero! Ma a me sembra che siano in particolare le donne ad uscire bene, almeno da questa versione del racconto: Kunti e Ghndari mi sono piaciute molto per la loro "umanità"! Sono le uniche che non si fanno prendere da troppo astio e orgoglio.
L'autore della critica schernisce poi la scelta di Peter Brook per Krishna, un uomo stempiato e con le guance scarne. Ma è una versione praticamente teatrale, che importanza ha l'aspetto dei personaggi???
A proposito, lo sapevi che l'attore che interpreta Arjuna è il padre di Giovanna Mezzogiorno? Infatti ho letto che anche lei ha lavorato con Peter Brook!
Non mi si apre il link del Pradip!
ReplyDeleteComunque penso che qualsiasi trasposizione cinematografica al di fuori della propria tradizione (ma anche al di dentro, però al di fuori ha un'aggravante in più!) porti a polemiche.
Immagina, per dirne una, se qualche regista straniero rifacesse un film sulla "nostra" divina commedia (magari l'han fatto) quante polemiche ci sarebbero: non ha capito la cosmologia, l'essenza del cristianesimo, ha massacrato la lingua di Dante...
Già quando si passa da un libro al film le critiche non mancano mai.
Per me sono solo storie raccontate, e dopo averlo visto ho sempre pensato che fosse una rielaborazione personale di Brook e non un opera di tipo filologico (fra l'altro l'ambientazione teatrale, in un certo senso, astrae da una interpretazione letterale).
Penso che non dovremmo prendere il Mahabharata di Brook come bibbia dell'induismo o dell'epica indiana, ma solo come una storia. E quindi l'aspetto di Krishna può essere lasciato alla fantasia dell'autore (tanto più che è tutto così teatrale). Anche l'attrice che interpreta Kunti non è credibile come indiana (quasi nessuno lo è!), ma penso non abbia importanza.
Capisco che ci possano essere certe cose che magari possano infastidire un indiano, ed è interessante anche capire cosa, e direi infatti che comunque spinge ad approfondire, come stai facendo tu.
(a proposito, mi è arrivato Bombay Duck, che polemizza sulle rappresentazioni occidentali di epica indiana, ti dirò!)
Sì, lo sapevo dei Mezzogiorno, fra l'altro Arjuna mi piace molto.
ciao!
Scusa, avevo dimenticato un punto nel link (non so perché non mi s'incollava):
ReplyDeletehttp://www.boloji.com/cinema/028.htm
Sono d'accordissimo con te: Peter Brook non aveva intenzione di fare un Mahabharata filologicamente ineccepile, ma crearne uno che fosse fruibile anche, e soprattutto, da un pubblico occidentale.
Il fatto che sia così "teatrale" è un punto a favore di Brook, perché spesso le rappresentazioni teatrali non sono verosimili e non vogliono esserlo. Indagherò, comunque, cercando di approfondire i personaggi e la storia.
Nel frattempo mi è arrivato "The Romantics" di Pankaj Mishra. Fammi sapere com'è Bombay Duck, o scrivine nel tuo blog!