AN ADVENTUROUS EPIC BASED ON A HISTORICAL BATTLE IN AMITAV GHOSH’S 'THE GLASS PALACE' (Pages 244-250) by Mrs. S. Hilda Princi Annie in THE ENGLISH RESEARCH EXPRESS / ISSN:2321-1164 (Online); 2347-2642 (Print)

Ghosh constructs the geography of the human heart in the novel The Glass Palace. It can be rightly called as an epic as it weaves together different strands of life and their history like King Thebaw, Queen Supayalat, Rajkumar, Dolly, Uma, Arjun, Dinu, Jaya and it also portrays the social chaos in Burma during colonial days. ‘The Glass Palace’ functions as a metaphor. Glass is brittle and implies transparency. It is a symbol of power, an illusion that is created around power. The colonized people are always imprisoned in the glass palace and they have lost the capacity to protest against the colonial masters. Majority of Postcolonial writers like Ghosh accentuate to diasporic writing. The displaced and marginalized self of the protagonist ultimately finds compromise with his/her hybrid identity, but eternally they long for their imaginary homelands. This novel which is undertaken for study, highlights the historical battle of the colonial rule and how the characters represent themselves as a victim of alienation and oppression by the dominant forces in the society. This paper attempts to explore the impact of colonialism, geographical dislocation, imaginary homeland, psycho-historical movement and adventures. Keywords: Historical fiction, geographical dislocation, spirit of patriotism, shattered and scattered