Review: Animal’s People by Indra Sinha
The US edition of Indra Sinha’s Booker-shortlisted novel Animal’s People was just published this week by HarperCollins. Last fall, when I first heard about the book which focuses on the effects of a chemical company explosion in a contemporary Indian city, I didn’t 
want to wait … so, I immediately ordered my copy from Amazon UK. (I’m glad I did because now I have a paperback copy with a cover that I much prefer over the American edition. See for yourself below.)Set in the fictional city of Khaufpur—home to a catastrophic gas explosion caused by an unnamed Kampani (if you’re thinking Union Carbide and Bhopal already, you’re not alone)—Animal’s People is the first-person account of Animal, a 19 year old, who walks on all fours, his back twisted by a disaster he is barely old enough to remember. Animal was born just a few days before “That Night” (his Apocalypse) when a chemical factory owned by Americans exploded, killing his parents, totalling his slum, and virtually destroying the health of many of the city’s poorer inhabitants. The Kampani changed his life before he really even knew what his life could be:
“I used to be human once. So I’m told. I don’t remember it myself, but people who knew me when I was small say I walked on two feet just like a human being … Ask people they’ll tell you I’m the same as ever, anyone in Khaufpur will point me out, ‘There he is! Look! It’s Animal. Goes on four feet, that one. See, that’s him, bent double by his own bitterness …”
This is the powerful first line of a novel that I ripped through it at breath neck speed, simultaneously refreshed by Sinha’s raw voice and haunted by the events and images that were unfolding in the novel itself.
Read the rest of this review over at Sepia Mutiny, where I’m guest blogging this month.
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