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.
The novel begins in the palace of Srirangapatna, where are principal characters are Abbas, a 17-year-old woodcarver’s son with a precocious talent, and Lucien Du Leze, a gay, alcoholic French clockmaker unable to return home after the Revolution. Tipu orders them to collaborate on the musical tiger as a gift for his favourite son, but, like every relationship in the novel, this grand gesture of paternal affection is tainted by politics.
Though the automaton is a great success, Abbas does not have long to enjoy his new status in the palace. Before he has even finished his apprenticeship with Du Leze, the British besiege the city, the sultan is killed and Abbas – barely escaping the slaughter – is forced to flee the kingdom. Through a series of picaresque adventures he ends up in Rouen, working for Du Leze’s adopted daughter, Jehanne, his only desire “to create a thing that would outlast him, and for which he would be remembered”. Together they travel to England with a plan to recover the automaton from the widow of Lord Selwyn, the British soldier who looted it after the siege.
Despite the obvious wealth of historical research that underpins the book, from woodcarving techniques to the minutiae of life on board sailing ships, James is not aiming for photographic realism here. This is a novel about the pleasures of artifice and the skills required to imitate life; to this end, the author subtly draws attention to the artificial nature of her own creation by dropping occasional contemporary notes into her historical language. There is a reference to Tipu’s “origin story”; later, an Indian servant, asked what brought him to England, almost replies, “I am here because you were there” – a quotation attributed to the Sri Lankan writer Ambalavaner Sivanandan, who died in 2018.
James makes a virtue of her story’s artifice because the historical setting is a lens through which to examine contemporary debates about the legacy of colonialism, particularly as it relates to plundered treasures. The title is made explicit in the name of a card game Jehanne plays with the elderly and canny Lady Selwyn, but throughout the novel, objects and people are appropriated by the powerful, in a world where “race is the final ranking”. Loot is a vivid and witty reimagining of an episode of history that continues to shape the present, and the ways we think about art, identity and ownership.
• Loot by Tania James is published by Harvill Secker (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
