International Journal of Language & Literature

Displacement of Nation in the Glass Palace
N. Sukanya, Dr. S. Sobana

Abstract
Nation has been considered as a form of “restrictively imagined collectivities” (Anderson 147) by Amitav Ghosh in “A Correspondence on Provincializing Europe” that creates hindrances in writing about the individual identity. This makes several writers deal with family centered novels and their conflicts. They find a way out from discussing the concept of nation by dealing with families in their works. Amitav Ghosh is one such writer who has displaced himself from bringing in the concept of nation in his 2001 Frankfurt International e- Book Award winning novel, The Glass Palace. Ghosh has brought in the lives of a few individuals linked in families and their experiences under one umbrella. Moreover, he makes those individuals search for a space that moves them away from the confinement of nation. This historical novel has portrayed the struggles faced by the people during the fall of the Konbaung Dynasty in Mandalay. Through these imaginary characters, Ghosh has displaced the notion of nation and has paved prominence to the family ties that revolve around their own inner conflicts which have a different imaginary concreteness from that of other countries like Europe and America.

Full Text: PDF      DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v3n1a15