The Glass Palace

Rajkumar is only another boy, helping on a market stall in the dusty square outside the royal palace, when the British force the Burmese King, Queen, and all the Court into exile! He is rescued by a farsighted Chinese merchant, and with him, builds up a logging business in upper Burma.

Haunted by his vision of the Royal Family, he journeys to the obscure town in India where they have been exiled. The picture of the tension between the Burmese, the Indian, and the British is excellent. Among the great range of characters is one of the court ladies, Miss Dolly, whom he marries, and the redoubtable Jonakin, part of the British-educated Indian colony, who with her husband has been put in charge of the Burmese exiled court.

The story follows the fortunes—rubber estates in Malaya, businesses in Singapore, estates in Burma—which Rajkumar, with his Chinese, British, and Burmese relations, friends, and associates, builds up—from 1870 through the Second World War to the scattering of the extended family to New York and Thailand, London and Hong Kong in the post-war years.