Animal’s People.

Sinha, Indra (author).

Can a novel about the 1984 chemical apocalypse in Bhopal, India, be funny? Yes, when the story is imaginatively told in the voice of a determined, strangely gifted 19-year-old survivor. An infant on “that night,” when a monstrous cloud of poison gas erupted from a pesticide plant, he was orphaned and eventually crippled by the disaster, his spine so severely bent he is forced to walk on all fours. Taunted and called Animal, he lives a hardscrabble life. Befriended by kind Nisha, Animal falls in love, even though she loves Zafar, the virtuous leader of a protest movement demanding reparation from the American chemical company. When an American opens a free clinic, Zafar calls for a boycott, certain that the clinic is in cahoots with the chemical company, but Animal can’t stay away. Writing with both serious intent and exuberant satirical humor, Sinha tells an antic, ribald, and searing tale of greed and heroism. Short-listed for the Booker Prize, Sinha’s daring farce asks what it means to be human, rekindles compassion for the still uncompensated victims of the real-life catastrophe, and celebrates the resiliency of love and goodness in the poorest and most poisoned of places.