Amitav Ghosh
“The Glass Palace” is one of my all time favourites, and I find it difficult to believe that it was written by the same author. That is by no means a takedown of this book, in fact it is to the author’s credit that he manages to do such a fantastic job across genres!
I’m finding it very difficult to give a genre label to this work – fantasy, horror, thriller, medical mystery historical fiction – though sci-fi for some reason seems to be its accepted genre. The plot uses a whole lot of themes – science, mysticism, religion, mythology, counter-science, even nihilism to a certain extent. I can’t be sure but I also wonder if the author was firing a tiny salvo at a Western attitude towards Indian scholars, and how history has been written to glorify its authors. (non-objective and not giving credit where due)
There is no single narrative point of view, it stretches across time and various parties even within the same time frame. The story begins in a very relatable scenario with Antar, whose smart computer discovers an ID card belonging to a person who went missing in 1995. At the time of his disappearance, Murugan, a self proclaimed Ronald Ross expert had been in Calcutta, trying to find the actual story of how Ross made the discovery of malaria’s transmission. While that might sound like a medical mystery you wouldn’t care about, the tale is far from it because what it leads to is the Calcutta Chromosome, a freak chromosome that is neither inherited from, or transmits to a gene pool! Extrapolated and controlled, this is immortality we are talking about.
The text is tight and keeps you glued. I found the ‘Phulboni experience’ a superb indication of the author’s ability to scare. The pace is blistering and sometimes the narrative switches between Antar, Murugan and the different folks in the latter’s storyline gets disorienting. There are connections everywhere and as a reader, there is no margin for flipping through without paying full attention. The author had me hooked and I was always wondering where this would lead to. Despite the X-Files meets Sherlock theme, he even manages to add a little humour to the proceedings.
In essence, a truly intriguing and interesting read.
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In one way, the end is a dampener, because the build up pretty much forces the reader to expect a fantastic closure. In fact, when I saw there were only a few pages left, I wondered how the author was going to end it all convincingly. Turns out he doesn’t. However, one could also argue that this kind of ending is exactly the point of the book. Or at least one of the points – silence. A philosophy that to know something is to change it, therefore in knowing something, you have already changed what you think you know so you don’t really know it at all. You only know its history. This is what is applied in the counter-science method. In a way, this is also how the ending operates – gives the reader enough clues to form his/her own conclusions and interpretations. Can you handle the silence?
