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A Novel
by Tania James
Book Reviewed by:A spellbinding historical novel set in the eighteenth century: a hero's quest, a love story, the story of a young artist coming of age, and an exuberant heist adventure that traces the bloody legacy of colonialism across two continents and fifty years. A wildly inventive, irresistible feat of storytelling from a writer at the height of her powers.
Abbas is just seventeen years old when his gifts as a woodcarver come to the attention of Tipu Sultan, and he is drawn into service at the palace in order to build a giant tiger automaton for Tipu's sons, a gift to commemorate their return from British captivity. His fate—and the fate of the wooden tiger he helps create—will mirror the vicissitudes of nations and dynasties ravaged by war across India and Europe.
Working alongside the legendary French clockmaker Lucien du Leze, Abbas hones his craft, learns French, and meets Jehanne, the daughter of a French expatriate. When Du Leze is finally permitted to return home to Rouen, he invites Abbas to come along as his apprentice. But by the time Abbas travels to Europe, Tipu's palace has been looted by British forces, and the tiger automaton has disappeared. To prove himself, Abbas must retrieve the tiger from an estate in the English countryside, where it is displayed in a collection of plundered art.
SRIRANGAPATNA, MYSORE
1794
I
On the day he is taken from his family, Abbas is carving a peacock into a cabinet door. He drives his gouge tip through the rosewood, adjusting the pressure with his pointer finger. Grooves deepen, a beak appears. He moves on to sculpt feathers, stacked like scales. He excels at this task and has never been so bored in his life. Seated nearby on coir mats are his father and two older brothers, Junaid and Farooq. With a post braced against the inside of his knee, Junaid knocks out nuggets of unwanted wood with the tak-tak! of his mallet and chisel. Farooq sketches a pair of peacocks for a headboard. Their father sands a finished post, stopping every so often to shoot Abbas a warning look.
"No more of your toys," his father has told him in private. "Beds and cabinets, that's it. The toys only bring trouble."
Pausing to arch his back, Abbas is distracted by a pigeon fluttering down from a roof across the lane. Curious, isn't it, the way birds bob their ...
As in any exceptional novel, resonances and subthemes run like an underground river throughout the book—most obvious in this case is the impact of the British in India and the never-overstated reminder of how deeply a country's course of history can be altered by a foreign civilization imposing its own modes. The British swept through the region with a great sense of their own destiny, and in doing so, deprived local cultures of their own...continued
Full Review
(600 words)
(Reviewed by Danielle McClellan).
Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies
I read Loot in a single sitting; it is a wild, dazzling eighteenth-century romp across continents with profound things to say about invention and self-reinvention, class and fate, and the deeply human hunger to create family as both bulwark against loneliness and constant source of light and warmth. Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
Loot is a feast—a hugely fun novel with a delicious plot that offers delights and profundities in equal measure. Each chapter of this sprint across the world serves stunning truths about circumstance and ambition, love and sacrifice, and the fickleness of victory. I devoured this book, and remain in awe of what Tania James has created.
Central to the plot of Loot is the magnificent Tipu's Tiger, the wooden automaton that Abbas, a young Muslim woodcarver, creates in the 1790s in collaboration with the French inventor and clock maker Lucien Du Leze at the request of their ruler, Tipu Sultan.
According to the Mechanical Art and Design Museum (MAD), the word automata (the plural of automaton) is taken from the Greek word αὐτόματα, or "acting of one's own will." An automaton is a moving, mechanical device, usually constructed to look like a human or animal figure, which uses a variety of mechanical systems to give the illusion of autonomous movement. Automata made before the 16th century have not survived, but we ...
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