The Thing About Thugs
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- 3,49 €
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- 3,49 €
Description de l’éditeur
A subversive, macabre novel of a young Indian man’s misadventures in Victorian London as the city is racked by a series of murders
In a small Bihari village, Captain William T. Meadows finds just the man to further his phrenological research back home: Amir Ali, confessed member of the infamous Thugee cult. With tales of a murderous youth redeemed, Ali gains passage to England, his villainously shaped skull there to be studied. Only Ali knows just how embroidered his story is, so when a killer begins depriving London’s underclass of their heads, suspicion naturally falls on the “thug.” With help from fellow immigrants led by a shrewd Punjabi woman, Ali journeys deep into a hostile city in an attempt to save himself and end the gruesome murders.
Ranging from skull-lined mansions to underground tunnels a ghostly people call home, The Thing about Thugs is a feat of imagination to rival Wilkie Collins or Michael Chabon. Short-listed for the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize, this sly Victorian role reversal marks the arrival of a compelling new Indian novelist to North America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his American debut a Victorian mystery pastiche Khair is as comfortable rendering late-1830s London as he is Phansa, "a wretched little town" in India, some hundred years later. The focus is Amir Ali, ostensibly a reformed member of the fearsome Indian "cult of Thugee" living in 19th-century London, and subject of Capt. William T. Meadows's phrenological study, Notes on a Thug: Character and Circumstances. Alternating between Notes on a Thug which comprises Amir's confabulated depravities and letters from Amir to his beloved, Jenny, the unnamed narrator tells the story based on snippets found in his grandfather's library in Phansa. When a series of brutal beheadings scandalizes London, suspicion quickly falls on the well-known "thug." Relying on his own wits and a group of fellow Indians, Amir must prove his innocence and bring the real perpetrators to justice. Although Khair shows a deft hand with a wide variety of genres, the mystery is finally overwhelmed by the overt postcolonial critique, and the predictable story sags under its weight.
