The acclaimed author of The Calcutta Chromosome and The Shadow Lines has burst out on to the big stage with a major saga on that hidden country, Burma.
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 far-seeing Chinese merchant, and with him builds up a logging
business in upper Burma. However, 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 are 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 World War II to the scattering of the extended
family to New York and Thailand, London and Hong Kong in the
post-war years.
