![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() We are led through 550 pages and 111 years of narrative (although the author does choose to omit a large chunk of more recent decades): from the palace of the last King and Queen of Burma, Thebaw and Supayalat, following them to their exile in Ratnagiri, on the west coast of India after the arrival of the ‘English cannon’ in Mandalay, to the teak traders of the Burmese jungle, the rubber plantations of northern Malaya, the Japanese offensive in Malaya and Burma, the wartime refugee trek of thousands of Indians from Burma towards Calcutta, the post-war independence movements of India and Burma, and the subsequent political upheaval in the latter, landing in 1996 with a brief visit to the pages of Aung San Suu Kyi, giving a speech under house arrest in Yangon, formerly Rangoon (notwithstanding documentary evidence suggesting her release from house arrest the previous year). The eponymous palace of this grand sweep of history tale is in Mandalay, Burma, and it is here, in 1885, that we first meet an Indian boy whose life story, and those of his descendants and others’ families, unfolds. ![]()
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