During the recent fuss about Jordan’s latest novel Crystal outselling all the books on the Booker shortlist put together, one of the saddest facts to emerge was that Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People has sold a mere 1,189 copies.

So, for every 100 people who have bought On Chesil Beach (and every 134 who have bought Jordan’s opus) just one has bought Sinha’s. More pitiful still is that fact that Animal’s People sold just 231 copies (one of which must have been the one I bought in order to write this review) before the final shortlist was announced. Ouch.
Of course, I can understand why the average punter might be wary of this book. The story of a half-crippled boy’s miserable life in the shadow of the poisonous clouds pumped out by a thinly disguised version of the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, is not the first place most people would turn for escapism, after all.

Especially since the book promises to stab at the social consciences of all those who have so far failed (like me) to even try to do anything about the continuing injustices and suffering in that blighted place.

If I’m honest, I’d probably have avoided the thing myself if I weren’t going to write about it— and it would have been my loss. Yes, because I was overdue a bit of consciousness-raising, but also because this is an impressive book— and a pleasure to read.

There’s a strong message about serious, painful issues, but it never preaches and it’s never worthy. It is, in fact, more than anything else, very funny— “scabrously funny” as New York magazine accurately described it.
Most of this black humour comes courtesy of ‘Animal’, the narrator. He was given his name as a child thanks to the after effects of the poison gas fallout from the ‘kampani factory’ in his Bhopal surrogate home, Khaufpur. It left him half-crippled, his back twisted out of shape so that he has to walk on all fours, his legs trailing uselessly behind him.

Animal, as his friend Farouq puts it, “might be an okay guy” if he “weren’t such a c***”. He claims to be interested in only one person— himself. At first he survives by scamming people out of money and stealing food from bins. Then, when he is rescued by the beautiful Nisha, he falls madly in lust with her (as he explains, “at least one part of me can stand upright”). He spies on her when she is naked and determines to destroy her saintly boyfriend Zafar: “One of these days I thought, preferably when your life depends on it, I am going to let you down.”

However, as the reader quickly realises, there is far more to Animal than he likes to admit. For a start, there’s the way he looks after an apocalypse-obsessed nun, Ma Franci, described (beautifully) as being “as mad as a leper’s thumbnail”. Then there’s the way he helps Elli Barber integrate herself into the community even though everyone else thinks this idealistic American doctor is a company stooge (even if he does spy on her when she’s naked too). There’s also the crucial support he lends his love rival Zafar in his fight to achieve some measure of justice for the victims of the kampani.

Heady experience
In short, he’s a glorious mass of contradictions and highly lovable to boot. His rich scatological humour and his unique voice, full of hilarious Hindi slang (mainly relating to sex and various states of intoxication), makes reading Animal’s People almost as heady an experience as Darkmans, while Sinha’s ability to bring to life “this land of cobras” make for a singularly vivid experience.

All the same, and much as I personally warmed to the book, I did have a few niggling complaints. There’s an irritating narrative framing device, wherein Animal is supposedly speaking into a tape machine, which is quickly forgotten until its unwelcome return in the final pages.

While the prose is generally delightful, it occasionally falls on the wrong side of the fine line between exuberance and nonsense: what, for instance, is a “flower of pain”? Most egregiously, there’s the fact that although Animal frequently tells us how miserable he is, we very rarely feel it. He may say, “I don’t want another life thanks, not if it’s like this one,” but generally he seems remarkably happy. So I don’t quite believe him.

I’m aware that that’s a strange thing to say about a mutilated, stunted creature living on four rupees a day in an evocatively described living hell. All the same, we really don’t get much impression of Animal’s pain other than when it relates to his sexual frustration and his awareness that he will never be really loved as a man.

Perhaps that’s enough, and perhaps too much navel gazing would detract from the cheerful lack of self-pity that makes the narrative so appealing. I can also understand why Sinha wouldn’t want to put such an adorable creation through too many agonies, but it still struck me as a small loss of nerve and one which, in the final reckoning, would make my vote for the prize go elsewhere. Only just, mind you.