Glorious Boy - by Aimee Liu (Paperback)

About the Book

On a remote island in British India, a mute four-year-old and the local girl who cares for him disappear on the eve of Japanese occupation, forcing the boy's parents, a young anthropologist and her physician husband, to take drastic measures to save the children.

Book Synopsis

"A riveting amalgam of history, family epic, anticolonial/antiwar treatise, cultural crossroads, and more, this latest from best-selling author Liu (Face) is a fascinating, irresistible marvel."--Terry Hong, STARRED Library Journal review

"Liu's prose is masterful. A good choice for book groups and for readers who are unafraid to be swept away."--*Starred Booklist Review*

"With a mesmerizing setting and transporting detail, Glorious Boy balances tropical beauty with raw, physical risk, and dives deep into grim truths about parental love and the power and limitation of language. This is a page-turner, sometimes violent but always revelatory. Readers won't easily forget the trials this young couple faces, or the landscape that changes them all."--Five Star Review from The Seattle Review of Books

What will it take to save Ty? This is the question that haunts Claire and Shep Durant in the wake of their four-year-old's disappearance. Until this moment, Port Blair's British surgeon and his young wife, a promising anthropologist, have led a charmed life in the colonial backwaters of India's Andaman Islands--thanks in part to Naila, a local girl who shares their mysteriously mute son's silent language. But with the war closing in and mandatory evacuation underway, the Durants don't realize until too late that Naila and Ty have vanished. While Claire sails for Calcutta, Shep stays to search for the children. Days later, the Japanese invade the Andamans, cutting off all communication. Fueled by guilt and anguish, Claire uses her unique knowledge of the islands' tribes to make herself indispensable to an all-male reconnaissance team headed back behind enemy lines. Her secret plan: rescue Shep and Ty. Through the brutal odyssey that follows, she'll discover truths about sacrifice that both shatter and transcend her understanding of devotion.

Review Quotes

"An absolutely gorgeous historical novel about ambition, culture clash, love, atonement, and one silent boy, set against the backdrop of a tribe in the Andamans struggling with British rule. So blisteringly alive, you feel the swampy heat and the bugs; so emotionally true, it grips at every page. Just magnificent and not to be missed." --Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World

"In Glorious Boy, Aimee Liu tears a forgotten footnote from the history books and brings it to life in an epic tale of a family caught in a clash of cultures and loyalties during World War II. Set in a penal colony on the remote Andaman Islands, Glorious Boy is the whirlwind story of vanishing cultures, unbreakable codes, rebellion, occupation, and colonization, all swirling around the disappearance of a mute four-year-old boy on the eve of the Japanese occupation of Port Blair. A stirring indictment of the brutality that humanity is capable of, Liu's heartbreaking new novel of love, betrayal, and sacrifice is also a testament to how far we will go for the ones we love." --Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, author of Shadow Child and Hiroshima in the Morning

"No doubt Aimee Liu's ambitious novel, Glorious Boy, will be praised, deservedly, as historical fiction, an adventure novel, even a ripping yarn, but the heart of this book is what it means to be a mother. Liu's sympathetic and complicated protagonist, Claire Durant, finds herself challenged when it comes to connecting with her atypical son, and the book asks us all to consider whose responsibility it is to be better with and to other human beings, especially those with whom we're most intimate. How do we learn what isn't instinct? How do we protect ourselves and others from our own best intentions? With a generous and exacting eye, Liu explores these questions and more, and we, lucky readers, get to go along for the ride." --Karen Shepard, author of Kiss Me Someone

"The most memorable and original novel I've read in ages. Aimee Liu takes us into a set of islands--an entire world--most of us have barely heard of, and evokes every side in a multi-cultural conversation with sympathy and rare understanding. Here is the rare book, full of heart yet rich with research, that opens a door to a revealing piece of history that few of us knew existed."--Pico Iyer

"A novel about family, communication, and colonialism in a rarely discussed sphere of World War II conflict." --Kirkus Reviews

"A good choice for book groups and for readers who are unafraid to be swept away."--Starred Booklist review

"Reminiscent of the tone and atmosphere of Somerset Maugham and George Orwell's Asia-set novels, Glorious Boy is a Second World War story of adventure and loss, uniquely set in the Andaman Islands, one of India's farthest flung territories....Glorious Boy stands out from the crowded shelves of World War II literature by immersing the reader in one of the remoter theatres of the Asian half of the War."--Susan Blumberg-Kason, Asian Review of Books

"...the thrilling story of one unstoppable mother on a quest to be reunited with her family."--Madeline Diamond, Travel+Leisure "20 New Books to Gift This Mother's Day"

"As WWII intensifies, anthropologist Claire Durant waits with her family for the all-clear to leave the lush and sacred Andaman Islands, in this fascinating novel about the many, often unexpected dimensions of war." --Booklist, "Top 10 Historical Fiction of 2020"

"Glorious Boy transcends history and geography and gets to the heart of things."

"This lyrical narrative takes the reader on a sweeping emotional and physical journey, exploring themes of endurance, love, sacrifice, motherhood, guilt, and hope." --Susan McDuffie, Historical Novel Society

"Glorious Boy is an exciting read, a family story that morphs into a high-stakes adventure." --The Washington Independent Review of Books

"Liu's well-crafted plotline shows how courageous action brings hope. In lushly described scenes, Glorious Boy engages the reader while not providing the characters any easy paths to resolution." -- Consequence Magazine

"This novel tugged at my heart in all the right ways. I got teary explaining to my husband why I'd cried the night before, when I'd stayed up until two in the morning finishing the book. As her characters' journey becomes increasingly fraught, Liu walks the emotional tightrope perfectly, never swaying into sentimentality but also never shying away from heartbreak." --Norah Vawter, Washington Independent Review of Books