A Son of the Circus – John Irving

Corgi, 1995, Paperback – Fiction – 829pp.

A Hindi film star and an American missionary are twins separated at birth; a dwarf — a former circus clown — mistakes the missionary for the movie star. And stalking one of them is a serial killer…
Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla, reared in Bombay by maverick foes of tradition, educated in Vienna, married to an Austrian and long a resident of Toronto, is a 59-year-old without a country, culture or religion to call his own….

The novel may not be ‘about’ India, but Irving’s imagined India, which Daruwalla visits periodically, is a remarkable achievement–a pandemonium of servants and clubmen, dwarf clowns and transvestite whores, missionaries and movie stars. This is a land of energetic colliding egos, of modern media clashing with ancient cultures, of broken sexual boundaries.”

–New York Newsday
“A SON OF THE CIRCUS IS COMIC GENIUS….GET READY FOR IRVING’S MOST RAUCOUS NOVEL TO DATE.”
–The Boston Globe
“HIS MOST DARING AND MOST VIBRANT NOVEL…The story of circus-as-India is told with gusto and delightful irreverence.”
–Bharati Mukherjee
The Washington Post Book
“Ringmaster Irving introduces act after act, until three (or more) rings are awhirl at a lunatic pace….[He] spills characters from his imagination as agilely as improbable numbers of clowns pile out of a tiny car….His Bombay and his Indian characters are vibrant and convincing.”
–The Wall Street Journal
“IRRESISTIBLE…POWERFUL…Irving’s gift for dialogue shines.”
–Chicago Tribune