Tania James’s fiction has straddled continents since the publication of her 2009 debut, Atlas of Unknowns. In Loot, her third full-length novel, she brings this transnational perspective to the story of a real-life artefact and the fictional characters drawn into its gravitational pull.
The object in question, known as Tipu’s Tiger, is a wooden automaton commissioned in the 1790s by Tipu Sultan, ruler of the Indian kingdom of Mysore. It currently resides in the V&A and depicts a near-life-size tiger mauling the prone body of a European soldier; machinery inside causes the figures to emit a growl when a crank is turned. The circumstances of the tiger’s origin are lost to us, but – according to an authorial note – its craftsmanship suggests a melding of Indian and French expertise. From these scant details, James conjures a cast of characters whose relationships span 50 years and half the globe.
