The Thing about Thugs

by Tabish Khair

Amir Ali leaves his village in Bihar to travel to London with an English captain, William Meadows, to whom he narrates the story of his life the story of a murderous thug. While Meadows tries to analyse the strange cult of the Indian Thug, a group of Englishmen sets out to prove the inherent difference between cultures and people by examining their skulls with bizarre consequences. Set in Victorian London, this story of different voices from different places draws intricate lines of connection from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, between England and India, across individual and cultural differences.Known for his refusal to fit his work into established diasporic ,subalternist or post-colonialist narrative traditions, in The Thing About Thugs, Khair finally engages with these traditions by subtly and ironically deploying echoes from Victorian literature, ranging from Charles Dickens to P.M. Taylor's Confessions of a Thug and Joseph Conrad s Heart of Darkness.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, India, Novels, British Literature, Historical

244 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2010

About the author

Tabish Khair was born and educated in Bihar, India. He worked in Delhi as a Staff Reporter until his late twenties and is now a professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. Winner of the All India Poetry Prize, his novels have been shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize (Hong Kong), the Hindu Best Fiction Prize and the Crossword Vodafone Literature Awards (India), the Encore Award (UK) and for translation prizes in Denmark and France.

Reviews

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Thing About Thugs is a difficult book to pigeonhole into a single category, and I'm not even going to try. It is part thriller, part examination of London's Victorian invisible underclasses, a look at the flaws in "superior" Western rationalism and the attitudes behind British imperialism, and it is a novel which turns the familiar colonial narrative on its head.

In Bihar, India, a young man is sitting in the library of his grandfather's house, which was once filled with shelves brimming with books. In one of these he has come upon a book of handwritten notes in Farsi, which belonged to one Amir Ali, along with a newspaper clipping reporting the death of a British lord and "scholar of phrenological science" on board a ship headed for Africa. His grandfather's library was filled with books by Dickens, Mayhew, William T. Meadows and Jane Austen among others; later libraries he would visit would also help him to imagine the story connecting the notebook and the report of the British lord's death. This is the frame on which the story of Amir Ali is told, and during the course of the story the author returns to reflect on writing, his life and other things of interest.

Amir Ali has come to London with the help of Captain William Meadows, who is writing a book on the Thug Cult of India. It is 1837; the book will eventually be published in 1840, but for now, Meadows is finishing up a series of interviews with Amir Ali, who for reasons of personal safety had to leave India, found out about Meadows, and told him a story of his life in the Thug Cult. It was, of course, made up, but Meadows didn't know that. Meadows is also a member of the London Society of Phrenology, the most current "scientific" fad, one that laid out a person's destiny depending on the shape of his skull. Lord Batterstone, another phrenologist, is building a "Theatre of Phrenological Specimen." He hopes his collection of the most exotic skulls will put the lid on the currently-popular theories of George Combe and silence Meadows "who had, since his return from India with his reprieved thug, Amir Ali, taken society by such storm." Batterstone is also toying with the idea of a trip to the Congo in hopes of more specimens. While Meadows is tending to his narrative based on Ali's fictitious account of being a Thug, Ali, in the meantime, is writing down the real story of his life in Farsi, which he hopes will be read someday by the object of his affections, a part-time maid named Jenny in Meadows' household. Jenny also happens to be the niece of the first victim of an extraordinary series of crimes.

Just who committed these outrages is a matter taken up by the local news reporter, who notes that "no Christian" could have done this -- that this sort of crime is associated with "other, hotter climes, with people reared on suspicions and barbarities, and not on the milk of human mercy that flows through Christian veins in the lands of civilization" and " some heathen, recently imported into our parts, who either practices a devilish or esoteric rite or consumes human flesh."

But despite all of their enlightened scientific reasoning, the London police are unable to solve these crimes, and as they increase in number, the same newspaper reporter stirs up the pot regarding immigrants coming to London:

"There are officers to inspect and certify the goods that are downloaded at West India and East India docks at the Isle of Dogs and the London Dock Company's docks at Wapping. But only if the goods are dead and inanimate. Every day hundreds of living goods are downloaded at those very docks, and they slip into the great city of London with hardly any inspection. There is no one to test if these living goods are of sufficiently high quality or not, to certify if they are undamaged and not rotted."

With the public fanning of the flames pointing to a "heathen" perpetrator, it's time to settle things once and for all. A group of the invisible underclasses, "lascars, ayahs, beggars, some impossible-to-place oddities..., and riff-raff, mostly but not entirely from the lands of Hindoostan" decide it's time to take matters into their own hands.

If this was all there was to this book, it might make for an interesting Victorian-style crime novel, but there's a great deal more in here. The story is really the frame holding together for "novelized history," as the writer puts it, done in a most tongue-in-cheek kind of style. Victorian London, as the seat of the British Empire, has its "ghosts" to be dealt with -- colonialism; the justification of racist attitudes via pseudosciences based on western rationalism and its fear of the outsider; society's treatment of the underclasses -- as well as the caste system among the middle and upper classes along with their servants. But at its heart, The Thing About Thugs is a story about stories and the people who tell them: the narrator back in Bihar acknowledges that there are things missing in Amir Ali's notes, so he has to "fill in the gaps." In his story, he turns the colonial narrative around to the point where Amir Ali and the ragtag group of lascars and the rest of the people one normally considers as marginalized are the heroes of the day, while the enlightened Londoners are either easily duped, led astray by their dependence on enlightened reason, or at their very worst, savage murderers, or filled with the potential to become the future Kurtz, a la Heart of Darkness.


I get the sense that Khair had a great time writing this book, and I had an equally great time reading it. I realize that not everyone is going to agree with me, largely because many readers may have trouble with the multiple narrative strands and the switching between time and place. And many people may be put off with the subject matter -- I mean, beheadings are never a fun topic, and not everyone will like the Victorian murder story format. I must admit to a bit of confusion at the start of the novel, and had to stop and take stock of what I actually thought was happening here in terms of structure -- you should see my little notebook full of question marks. But once I figured it out, I was off and never stopped. There is an excellent book underneath all of the potentially problematic issues, and if people can get underneath the surface of this novel, they will be richly rewarded. I actually am in awe when I find a book this good.

[Girish · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What we are, what we appear to be, what we pretend to be and what we are said to be are four very different things. Such is the nature of life, one of it's many imperfections, you might say"

Tabish Khair's Thing about Thugs has an intriguing setting, a promising story and a lot of theatricals - and yet something is found wanting.

A storyteller in the present, sitting in his grandfather's library with 2 versions of a 'Thug' Amir Ali's account starts to put it into a narrative as the context. One as captured by Captain Meadows in his book on reformation of thugs (and in a warped way, equality of humans) and the other through letters he writes to his Jaanam (Jenny who could not read these letters) of his innocence and love. As a parallel narrative we see brutal murders and beheadings across London and a columnist who voices popular opinion that this must be act of someone Oriental with a history of violence (all but mentioning the name).

Set in 1840's London The book introduces the readers to Phrenology (study of skulls), the popular opinions on superior races vs violent races, the opium dens and lives of colonial migrants and a glimpse of an underground tunnel system! Qui Hi and her Irish husband Paddyji along with the dock workers from India try to clear the name of Amir Ali and catch the real murderers in the societal leanings of the time.

I am not sure what the omnipresent story teller's role in the book actually is. Why does he have to explain his own life and so imagine the scene in the 1840 London - not sure if it added any mystique to it. The inaction of Major Geyper who is incharge of the investigation with 18 murders seems a lot incompetent, especially since they have an eyewitness record at the site of 1st murder. The story grows extremely hopeless around 60-65% and it was almost as if the third part was added just to put an end to the misery.

Despite all of this - it was an engaging read.

[Andy Quan · Rating 5 out of 5]

First and foremost, Tabish Khair’s novel, The Thing About Thugs, is a great read. Both literary and accessible with beautiful writing and colourful characters, it’s well worth your time.

The Thing About Thugs is also an accomplished act of ventriloquism. Khair’s narrative moves between the voices and thoughts of diverse characters and a narrator, bringing them to life, no simple task as the characters reflect both the highest and lowest ranks of London’s society and beyond. This is what makes the book most interesting: it takes a Victorian murder mystery and melds it with world literature, with a diverse cast of characters from the Indian sub-continent. And rather than being the usual voiceless background characters, to add colonial colour, here, it is their story. They are the main characters.

I like this hybridisation. One of my favourite novels, Fall on your Knees, took the Canadian pioneer novel and melded it with the Canadian multicultural novel to create a fabulous story. Here, this combination of literatures raises questions, subtly, about who is speaking and who has power. Also adding complexity and engagement to the book is the question of perspective and reliability. The main character, Amir Ali, voices one story through his love letters to his object of affection, Jenny. William Meadows, who interviews Ali on his life as a ‘thug’ presents academic notes towards a book. Later in the book are newspaper reports and clippings. The characters are portrayed in the narration but also speak at other times for themselves. Even the narrator himself is suspect. The act of storytelling, and writers writing about themselves being writers, is a theme worn thin in literature, but here I found the exploration of storytelling playful and engaging. When the narrator’s voice actually breaks free of the story completely to muse upon his role, it is poignant. The story is narrated ’not only through claims of knowledge and visibility, which are inevitably based on my knowledge of myself, but also through conjecture, silence, darkness.'

Also amusing is the very key theme of the book, nature vs. nurture, and how we are formed by culture or biology. While there is never a question of who wins the debate in the book, the theme has a nice modern ring to it in this age of genome testing and DNA analysis. The writing itself though is marvellous. In one dinner party scene, readers are successfully drawn back into the physical time and setting amidst the moral debates and concerns of the time where the conversation of the different guests starts to smell itself of its subject matter: ‘the pungent scent of science’, ‘gardens and nonchalant domesticity’ and ‘an odour composed of equal portions of the ballroom and the stable’.

And last to mention is the lovely handing off of the narrator from a focus on one character to another, where the last part of the novel is in the hands of the memorable Qui Hy, a wise and wily old Punjabi woman. To have a scrappy elderly outsider play a heroine’s role feels a wonderful overturning of the structures of power of the time and described in the book. That the book was so satisfying and funny and enjoyable does not take away from its serious literary accomplishment.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a tough read, and not because of the author's writing style. In fact, he writes in an active voice and the story is fascinating. I mean, what's not to like about a thriller set in the slums of London more than 100 years ago involving a serial killer who beheads his victims - not for thrills, but for money?

On the contrary, I found it a difficult read because he changes narrative voices so often - sometimes in every chapter - that the reader has to get re-oriented constantly.

Khair also hs an opportunity to build some real suspense at the end. Yet, for some reason, he chooses to take the reader away from the climax and then look at the outcome in retrospect.

Khair lets us know throughout the book who the killer is, and that's fine. This is not a mystery. The suspense, on the other hand, is in whether or not the killer will get away with it at the expense of the main character who had been falsely accused of the crimes.

So he lays out a scheme by other characters to catch the true killer, but then lets us know of the outcome through a bland newspaper story. He never even attempts to take us to the climactic scene.

I really wanted to like this book more. At times I thought I'd give it four stars, and at others two. His writing, the subject, the characters and the subtexts of racism and class prejudice were what kept me in the book. However, his narrative gymnastics and an unsatisfying ending - unsatisfying because of the treatment, not because of the outcome - holds this book back from being the great read it could be.

[Kris Saknussemm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tabish Khair is an Indian writer I met recently at the Ubud Writer's Festival in Bali (which is a great event on the world writing scene btw). He's considered one of the major new writers on the subcontinent, although he lives in Europe.

Reviewers frequently call attention to the fact that he's a Muslim Indian, the implication being he has some unique perspective on outsiders. What I find more interesting is his "working class kid" upbringing, and the search for something better--and the working class understanding of what holds communities together as much as what keeps them apart.

Thugs is a very strange story about individuals from truly different communities, who are each in their own odd ways looking for that something better.

It's a multi-voice/perspective novel set in Victorian London that features an insider's narrative on the art of assasination, and a practical look at the matter of harvesting distinctive skulls from recently dead bodies.

If I were an illustrator, I would love to turn this into a graphic novel. It cries out for it.

But beyond the rich historic atmosphere is a story about predation and collaboration on many levels--cultural, economic, social. The thing about thugs, it turns out, is that they're so very much like us.

[Charlie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Much like what happens in baseball, I believe I've fallen into a reading slump. This summer's advanced readers have been rather disappointing. All seduced me with mention of Victorian London, but all failed to capture my attention. The Thing About Thugs is told in different voices by three different narratives, one of which is set in an annoying script. None of them are particularly interesting, surprising, shocking or intriguing. Instead of building tension and drawing a connection as promised in the synopsis, this style is jarring and convoluted. Just when I was getting used to a voice, it would whip back to another and frankly, was so over-written that it was stressful to follow. I simply got bored. I tried, I really tried, but I couldn't become engaged with the story. Also, the comparison to Charles Dickens is in my opinion, absurd. The only commonality is London, besides that, I have a difficult time agreeing with the PR for this novel. I think many readers will find it misleading and disappointing. If you're looking for a good old murderous mystery novel set in Victorian London, this is not it. If you want cultural insight into India and a lesson in phrenological science, perhaps you will enjoy The Thing About Thugs.

[Blandine Longre · Rating 5 out of 5]

C’est depuis la bibliothèque de son grand-père, à Phansa, petite ville imaginaire de l’état indien du Bihar, qu’un narrateur anonyme bâtit « le fantôme d’une histoire vraie », la trame d’une intrigue qui débute à Londres en 1837, à la veille du couronnement de la reine Victoria : à partir d’ouvrages divers (réels ou fictifs), d’une coupure de presse datée de 1839, d’un manuscrit épistolaire rédigé en persan et de ses propres réminiscences, le narrateur tisse des récits enchâssés qui enjambent temps et espace, dont celui d’Amir Ali, lequel a quitté son village natal du Bihar pour accompagner le capitaine William Meadows jusqu’à Londres. Ce dernier, tout particulièrement intéressé par la carrière de thug d’Amir Ali, lui demande de lui relater l’histoire de sa vie – Meadows souhaite en effet écrire un ouvrage destiné à instruire ses contemporains, Notes à propos d’un thug : caractère et circonstances. Meadows ignore cependant tout des véritables intentions d’Amir Ali… et ce sera au lecteur de démêler les fils du récit de ce dernier. Dans le même temps, Lord Batterstone, phrénologue renommé, charge John May, un individu qui a fait tous les métiers, de lui trouver des crânes et de les lui apprêter : peu importe leur provenance, il lui faut des crânes exceptionnels pour son « Théâtre de Spécimens phrénologiques », grâce auquel il parviendra enfin à prouver les différences inhérentes qui séparent les races et les cultures, et à réfuter les arguments de ses adversaires. La quête désespérée de John May le pousse peu à peu à commettre des actes qui provoquent sensation et terreur dans tout Londres. Bientôt, les soupçons se porteront sur Amir Ali – car qui d’autre qu’un Oriental, thug de surcroît, aurait pu commettre de telles abominations ?
À propos d’un thug subvertit les repères classiques du récit postcolonial, du roman victorien, du roman à sensation et plus particulièrement du roman policier, et brouille les frontières entre fiction, imagination et réalité en interrogeant sans répit les notions de vérité, d’authenticité et de crédibilité – historiques, identitaires, narratives – via la juxtaposition de fausses vérités et de vrais mensonges. Aussi le narrateur déstabilise-t-il volontairement le lecteur en mêlant éléments réels et fictifs ou pseudo-historiques : Notes à propos d’un thug : caractère et circonstances du capitaine William Meadows, cité dès l’exergue et dont on découvre de nombreux extraits au fil du roman, s’inspire très librement d’un roman bien réel, lui : Confessions of a Thug de Meadows Taylor, publié en 1837 (Mémoires d’un Thug, traduit de l’anglais par Lucienne Escoube, disponible chez Phébus).
De la même façon, la vérité historique du phénomène thugiste est déconstruite, non sans ironie, à travers le double récit d’Amir Ali (celui qu’il livre à Meadows, confronté à celui qu’il relate en persan dans un journal intime hybride), et permet ainsi de dévoiler fantasmes, clichés paternalistes et constructions faussées que les Britanniques et les puissances impérialistes en général ont entretenus, consciemment ou non, sur l’Inde et sur tout autre pays colonisé. Des procédés semblables mettent en lumière l’absurdité de la pseudoscience phrénologique (à travers le personnage de Batterstone, dont le fanatisme est sans bornes) et les préjugés engendrés par la notion de « races », l’auteur ridiculisant ces certitudes « scientifiques » et le « Dieu de la Raison » que ne cesse d’invoquer Meadows.
Ainsi, Amir Ali, personnage insaisissable posté entre deux mondes, dont le rôle de témoin en terre étrangère n’est pas sans rappeler les Lettres persanes de Montesquieu, ne se réduit pas à l’archétype qu’il incarne aux yeux des puissants ou de l’ordre public : une fois les stéréotypes renversés, c’est lui qui passe pour un homme cultivé et sage, parlant mieux l’anglais qu’on ne le croit, se jouant de ceux qui le considèrent avec crainte, mépris ou bienveillance paternaliste. Outre la quête identitaire d’Amir (et de tant d’autres, comme le prouvent au fil du roman les précisions données sur les noms et les appellations de chacun, à la limite de l’obsession), À propos d’un thug se double une histoire d’amour presque invraisemblable (celle d’Amir et de Jenny, bonne à tout faire analphabète, nièce d’une vieille femme qui tient une fumerie d’opium) et développe sans relâche deux thèmes étroitement liés, ceux de la solitude et de la vengeance, dont Amir Ali est le catalyseur involontaire. L’auteur s’intéresse également de près aux « invisibles » de la cité londonienne et de ses bas-fonds, monde que l’on pénètre grâce au récit de Paddyji, vieil Irlandais opiomane marié à une ancienne ayah indienne, Qui Hy : lascars échoués en Europe, brigands de diverses origines, résurrectionnistes, bohémiens, mendiants, domestiques – individus dont on attend servilité et silence mais qui, dans leur univers parallèle, s’avèrent capables de prendre en main une enquête qui échappe à la sagacité des autorités policières et médiatiques, et de parfois faire montre de solidarité à l’égard de ceux qui leur ressemblent.
Le roman, en accumulant les niveaux de lecture, propose ainsi une intrigue polymorphe, kaléidoscopique et labyrinthique en parfaite adéquation avec la multiplicité des genres et des styles auxquels l’auteur rend hommage en même temps qu’il les transgresse (roman exotique, d’amour, policier, victorien, épistolaire, biographie romancée, etc.), ainsi qu’une réflexion filée sur la lecture, l’écriture et le langage (entre autres par le biais d’une langue émaillée de termes étrangers, en particulier hindoustanis, qui constamment rappellent les identités doubles et souvent disjointes de certains personnages). La fragmentation de surface fait sens à mesure que les récits morcelés se télescopent (à l’instar d’un précédent roman de Khair, Filming, Picador, 2007), donnant alors naissance à des parallèles insoupçonnés entre des personnages, des voix, des siècles, des contrées et des cultures en apparence divergents, des bas-fonds du Londres victorien nimbé de brouillard à nos villes modernes et cosmopolites.
En construisant le récit sous nos yeux depuis une bibliothèque fantomatique, le narrateur élabore un roman délibérément livresque, érudit, dans lequel s’entrelacent en permanence d’autres récits, histoires, romans : ceux qui l’ont inspirés (de Dickens à Wilkie Collins, en passant par Mayhew, Peter Ackroyd, Conrad ou Austen), ceux qui s’écrivent à l’intérieur du roman (dont l’ouvrage du capitaine Meadows ou le journal épistolaire d’Amir Ali), ceux qui sont physiquement présents (les Œuvres complètes de Shakespeare, bible d’un pacha antillais des bas quartiers) ou encore les étonnants fragments poétiques et religieux inscrits sur les parois d’une grotte dissimulée sous la ville de Londres, œuvre monumentale d’Ustad, vieil ermite indien : « le plafond est entièrement couvert d’extraits du Coran et de vers de poètes tels que Mir Taqi Mir et Wali Mohammed Wali – la belle écriture cursive, argent, or et blanc, ouvre ses ailes sur la pierre et le plâtre, les agitant comme un oiseau pris dans un filet, emplissant la salle d’un bruit silencieux. Des fragments sophistiqués de cultures perdues se sont fondus pour créer cette volière d’alphabets hurlants, muets, en appui sur les ruines d’un esprit… »

[Christina (A Reader of Fictions) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Originally posted here. Also, I'm giving away my ARC - enter by the 13th.

The Thing About Thugs is not precisely my ordinary reading material. Howe cover, I have always been morbidly fascinated by books about serial killers, although I'm not sure that designation is quite right for what happens here. At any rate, I was also drawn in by the racial tensions and the unique sound to the story. Sadly, The Thing About Thugs did not turn out to be precisely my kind of read.

What was really cool about this book was all that I learned about the study of phrenology, or trying to read the human skull, something I knew little about previously. I think I'd heard of it, but that's about it. The study itself, while creepy, is also scientifically and psychologically interesting. While the debates about phrenology might tire some readers, I found those sections to be most illuminating.

So, too, did I enjoy the parts about the murders. More than that, I enjoyed the whole way the scientific process sometimes worked back then, with some men robbing graveyards for the bodies to be used in experiments. What grisly work! People would go to such lengths to study such things. It amazes me that there was a whole underworld industry for that.

What lost me more than anything else as a reader, though, was the structure Khair used to tell this story. While Khair's writing itself is good and not without appeal and skill, I didn't care much for the organization or narration style used. I found that I was constantly withdrawn from the story and that the focus was often on the least interesting (to me) aspects.

Khair told the story through multiple media: newspaper articles, letters written by Amir Ali to his love (though never sent), transcripts of Amir Ali's story to William T. Meadows, first person narration (though we don't know whose for a long time), and even (I think) some omniscient third-person narration. This was just too much. I feel like it would have been a stronger novel with more of the third-person narration. The first person narration was jarring, especially following third person sections. I had so much trouble trying to figure out what was going on and I don't think that added to the story in any way.

Amir Ali's story is an interesting one, and he is a compelling character. However, I didn't feel like I particularly came to know him, probably because all I really learned about him was from his letters. This means I was only TOLD who he was, rather than getting to see him interact with anyone too much.

Obviously, this book has been lauded, what with being shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Though it was not my cup of cocoa, I think other readers will likely enjoy this Victorian mystery, in which prejudices are generally wrong.

[Doreen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Thing About Thugs seems almost like 2 different books, tied together by the fact that they're eventually headed in the same narrative direction. The first book, consisting of about the first 170 or so pages, is an exploration of crime and greed, told primarily through the love letters of Amir Ali, the journals of Captain Meadows and the interactions between John May and Lord Batterstone. There are also editorial interludes provided by the nameless narrator who is viewing this all from the present day: frankly, they're an incredibly pointless plot device that seem to have been tacked on in order to make the story more "literary." The pace of this first book is tedious, though a lot of time and territory is covered. I found it tough going, similar in its weaknesses to the flaws of E. M. Forster's "A Passage To India" (and to some people, that may sound like praise.)

But then Tabish Khair seems to wake up from his somnolence and decides to throw excitement into the mix. I think it's signaled from this line, in one of Amir's letters, as if to indicate that the foundation for this story has finally been meticulously laid, and the real fun of the book can begin:

"Are we then nothing but the playthings of language? When do we tell stories, and when do stories tell us? Oh, my love, I wish you were back now, so I could touch you and dispense with words."

And then all the literary pretensions are abandoned as Mr Khair tells us a story. Once Qui Hy and her Irish husband take center-stage, the book becomes a real page-turner, as they race to bring the Resurrectionists and their wealthy client to justice. I would pay to read more of the resourceful, relentless Qui Hy and her dealings with the "underclasses" of London society, even when she's unsuccessful (as in her original attempt to use class snobbery to persuade Major Grayper of the real identity of the villains. That was a brilliant piece of plotting on Mr Khair's part.)

The book ends with Amir contemplating once more the price of vengeance (and for once the narrator's voice here doesn't sound forced and intrusive.) If Mr Khair had been able to infuse the first two-thirds of this book with as much entertainment value as the last third, he would have had an amazing novel on his hands, one that plumbs the meaning of story-telling, and what tales may have to say about the story-teller. As it is, too much of the book is a slog, though I'd say it's worthwhile in the end, if only for the formidable Qui Hy (of whom the author writes, "Providence, she thinks, is a bully always on the lookout for smiling people, so that it can bash them in the face.")

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gruesome beheadings! The infamous Thugee cult! A young man Indian man in Victorian London! This all sounds like great fodder for a fun mystery/adventure story, and I was predisposed to like this book due to these elements. Unfortunately, although I more or less enjoyed this book well enough, it never quite fulfilled my expectations. One issue is that the book is told through three different narrative lines: a young man (the author) in contemporary India who is poking around his grandfather's old library and discovering scraps of a fascinating tale; the third-person story of a young Indian brought to London by a wealthy phrenologist to narrate his life as a thugee, and the diary-in-letters of that young Indian, written to his English love interest (set in a really annoying script typeface). The constant switching back and forth between these in different sections (there are 120 sections in the book, roughly one every other page), along with the occasional other insertion (a newspaper story, an excerpt from a book manuscript, etc.), kept taking me out of the story and the book as a whole.

A second issue I had with the book is not really of the author's making. It's being marketed to a certain extent as a mystery, but there's little mystery to the events. The reader learns who is committing the murders and why very early on, and the opening pages of the book include a description of the villan's fate. As a result, there's no real tension involving the murders until quite late in the story, when the hero is accused and his friends rally their underground resources to try and unmask the true culprits. Which aren't to say there aren't some fun characters, some colorful period detail, and scraps of a ripping yarn here and there -- but it doesn't coalesce into anything truly satisfying. It's also using imperial attitudes toward immigration to comment on contemporary attitudes, and the theme of identity runs strong throughout, but again, neither of these feels particularly fresh. All of which is to say that it's not a bad book, but with some heavy editorial changes, I could imagine the story working better on the screen than it does on the page. Comparisons to Michael Chabon and Wilkie Collins are even more wildly overstated than the usual publisher PR.

[Mythili · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gang of killers is on the loose in Victorian London, taking the lives—and the severed heads—of the city’s lowlife. The press spins tales of cannibalism to further terrorize the public, never suspecting the gang’s real motive is money. The killers collect skulls because they are paid handsomely for their work. Their patron is the wealthy Lord Batterstone, a high-society phrenologist obsessed with expanding his anatomical collection. But the newspapers turn the public’s attention toward Amir Ali, a confessed former member of the bloodthirsty Indian Thuggee cult. Ali has been making the rounds in London social circles as the pet project of a man named Captain William Meadows. In reality, Amir is nothing more than an unlucky farmer’s son who saw self-mythologizing as a ticket out of unfortunate circumstances. Now Ali’s exotic tales of murder have caught up with him, and he is out of luck once again. Running out of options, Ali and his fellow second-class immigrants decide to hunt down the man behind the killings themselves. It’s easy to see why The Thing About Thugs was short-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Crafted through layers of narrative (third and first-person observations from a variety of characters are interspersed with love letters, passages from Captain Meadows’s Notes on a Thug, and newspaper clippings), the story both mimics and upends the conventions of a Victorian novel. Author Tabish Khair also gives voice to a class of Londoner underrepresented in 19th-century-British literature: The voice of the forgotten, the marginalized, the misunderstood, and unknown.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles...

[L · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a mystery here, of a sort, but that isn't the point. The book is about living in an immigrant enclave, trying to get by, enduring exploitation and racism. It's about evil and how easy it can be to slip over the line. It's about colonialism. It raises questions about the costs and satisfactions of revenge. It's about friendship and love. It's about the humanity of those being continually stomped on.

Khair's story is placed in Victorian London, but the issues he taps into remain relevant. Although the scientific abuse of the poor and people of color has changed its face and location (to the research clinic), it's still very real.

My favorite character might be Qui Hy, the "shrewd Punjabi woman" of the inside cover blurb. She has her finger in everything, knows what's going on in almost every corner of London, all without leaving her home. She's great! But then, all the characters are terrific. Khair writes Amir, Captain Meadows, and others beautifully. The voices are real, ordinary people, exploiters, and criminals all.

I have to find more from this author.

[Deepa Agarwal · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece of a novel, which travels between contemporary and colonial India to Victorian London. The author knits not only fact and fiction, but also the varying strands of his story together with compelling ease.
Tabish Khair's prose is finely wrought and the variation in narrative voice provides the reader with the perspective demanded by this complex tale. The gruesomely fascinating face of nineteenth century London's underbelly is as vividly depicted as that of rural India.
This is not a mere crime novel, but an exploration of the nexus between greed and crime which remains the same in countries as far flung as India and Britain. The blinkered vision of the coloniser, smug in the mistaken belief of his superiority, comes across as equally destructive as the small mindedness of village politics.
Some people believe that the infamous cult of Thugee was a myth created by the British. Khair had left this question unanswered, most appropriately.

[Sara Habein · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways, the darker elements and seeing the killer's point-of-view reminded me of Patricia Highsmith's work, though she did not set any of her stories (that I know of) in Victorian times. The methodical way everyone justifies their bad behavior, killer or not, is also very much like her. The difference is that Khair doesn't write with underlying disdain for society. There is still an element of magic, though not the fantastical kind. It's magic in the form of hope, the willful suspension of disbelief, and the transforming power of a good story. I certainly recommend tracking down this book.

(My full review appears on Glorified Love Letters.)

[Shan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un ragazzo Thug molto promettente ed intelligente viene prelevato dal capitano William T. Meadows, appassionato e studioso di frenologia (lo studio dei teschi), e fatto partire dall'India per l'Inghilterra. Il ragazzo Amir Ali etnicamente apparteneva alla comunità thug, della quali molti avevano paura, allora, per i raid violenti contro alcuni gruppi della popolazione locale. Amir però non aveva mai partecipato ad alcuna azione criminale. Siamo nell'era vittoriana, l'amore per le culture esotiche ed orientali tanto promosso e professato dalla regina Vittoria coinvolge tutti e diventa moda. Questo è anche il periodo degli studi ascientifici di Lombroso sui volti, dello sfruttamento dei nativi delle colonie europee in Asia ed in Africa ed in Australia e Nuova Zelanda, si precostituisce l'idea di "razza" e che a determinate "razze" appartengano debolezze, vizi, intelligenze inferiori. Oggi sappiamo benissimo che il termine razza per indicare un'etnia è ascientifico e stupido.
In questo clima che ricorda i romanzi di Mary Shelly, Arthur Conan Doyle e Robert Louise Stevenson, Amir cerca di integrarsi nella Londra cosmopolita e neoindustriale. Nel frattempo poveri malcapitati vengono trovati cadaveri per le strade con la testa mozzata. Amir è uno degli indagati, il suo passato non lo aiuta. Così suo malgrado si troverà ad investigare per salvarsi la vita dall'esecuzione. Romanzo molto appassionante, Tabish Khair riesce bene a ricreare le ambientazioni neogotiche e vittoriane alla perfezione Il mandante degli omicidi è il capitano che chiede ai suoi scagnozzi teste particolari e con diversi difetti per i suoi studi frenologici . Amir si salva.

[Kurt Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tragically underrated here on Goodreads -- perhaps oversold or expected to be something it is not. This is an outstanding work of literature with a story that is compelling, moving and gripping; though, it is *not* a whodunnit mystery.

There is a literary fatalism to the book's events that, I found, managed to avoid the trap of feeling boring or moralistically overwrought and so acts, simply, as a mirror to humanity. I found its form, its mosaic of narrators, to fit its content perfectly as such -- each narrator a mirror warped in different ways, such that the art is not so much what happens but how each person saw it happen.

Other critics from Publishers Weekly to the New York Times book review disagree with me, here, calling it, in turn, "overt and "predictable" (PW) and a "Frankenstein's monster, its bits and pieces barely held together with coarse stitching"(NYT). Patrick McGrath, for the New York Times, seemed to be particularly upset that the date given did not quite line-up, historically, with exactly what the gentry white men would've been discussing at that exact time in London, and that the characterizations of the gentry white men were shallow and stereotyped in a novel explicitly about racial and class stereotypes. He didn't stop to think that that, maybe, was the point?

Perhaps there is a fine line between the derivative and the deserving, but I thought this one landed well on the side of the deserving.

[Ruby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading The Thing about Thugs. The author blends together so many storytelling techniques and styles into one novel, and nudges the reader to question our concept storytelling itself. Whose voice, what POV and what cultural/political influences shape how we perceive stories?

Like other reviews note, this isn't the typical mystery and includes elements of historical fiction and fantasy. An engaging mystery, the novel follows the life of young Amir and the community of the "unseen" in London into which he eventually lands. Multiple POVs set in contemporary India and Victorian London pull political and social commentary into every page. Also, the writing is excellent!

[Alicia Farmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Khair was doing some clever things in this book. But they were too subtle or too obscured for me to fully grasp. In the end I was merely confused and frustrated. I gave up 1/3 of the way through. It seemed like Amir Ali, the "Thug" of the title, was telling two versions of his life story. One conformed with the racist narrative expected by the Englishman who was writing down the Indian's story. The other was Ali's self-authored story, written for the woman who is his love interest. That much was interesting, but got lost in another plot concerning phrenology and digging up corpses for their skulls.

[George Ilsley · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are three story lines here. One in London, following a grave robber. One purporting to be a document about Thugs in 1840, and a third story line written in a florid script which (I believe) is supposed to suggest a handwritten document. I enjoyed the London story line; the document was hard to get into, and the florid script was impossible to read (literally, it strained the eyes). I tired skipping two of the three story lines, but then thought, what the thug? and gave up.
Sorry, it's not you, it's me.

[Caren · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a contemporary piece, the writing felt very much like I was reading a Victorian novel. The premise of the phrenology and the murders for the skulls is definitely intriguing. I have to go back to reading some post-colonial lit. theory because i feel like I missed a lot with the characters by not remembering some of it.

The only part that i felt I needed to read and reread were the different narratives like Amir Ali's letter, the person who was narrating based off of letters in his grandfather's library and then the Capt'n Meadows Thug narrative. Some of it was confusing, but overall, a really unique read!

[Nisma · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's something Philip Pullman-ish about this - think Sally Lockhart. Another time, another place, mystery and intrigue, a motley cast, a dozen things going on at once, and even though you think you know everything - you the omniscient reader - you still can't see where it's going, and then it all comes together. Beautifully.

[Nandlal Gurjar · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this novel Tabish Khair picturizes the racial prejudice and atrocity of colonialism. how the marginalized were treated, and they were the considered the sole accused of any crime occurred. a crime fiction set in Victorian England. the narrative travels between contemporary and colonial India to Victorian London.

[Bonnie Sheehan · Rating 1 out of 5]

To be honest, I chose not to finish this one. That's not a choice, so I marked it read so it would go away.

[John Buchanan · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK, took a while to come together

[MD ENZAMAMUL · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit complex but thought provoking novel. It tells how a man can lose his own identity and is compelled to live a false life that he himself has created with his lies.

[Nicole Simpson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and gripping trip through the back alleys of London, Philosophy and the nature of humanity

[Aditya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am struggling to rate this book. I did sort of enjoy the book but that is largely due to the characters the author creates in the book. Don't get me wrong, the writing is good too, almost poetic as someone else mentioned. But I am not fond of the story-within-a-story writing style and the novel kind of meandered towards the end. I wonder if this was done intentionally by the author. After all, India itself is confusing, overwhelming and beyond explanation, and so must stories about India be too.
All said, Tabish is a great find for me and I look forward to reading more from the author.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

The thing about The Thing about Thugs that's most pleasing to me is the way it's told, the way the narrative perspective and style shifts. There's the first-person narration of a present-day author-figure who finds a bundle of notes from the mid-1800s in his grandfather's library in India: the notes are in Farsi and are accompanied by a newspaper clipping about a disappeared English nobleman and a pamphlet about the gruesome murder of a woman in London. Then there's the story that author tells, which is partly the story of that murder and others: it's not a mystery, exactly, because it's clear who is committing the murders and how and why. That story is mostly in third-person, but with first-person interjections: the author "seeing" the past, or rather, seeing his way into it through the story told in the notes. Other sections of the book are presented as bits of other texts: excerpts from a book by Captain Meadows, an English military man and phrenology enthusiast about one Amir Ali, a "Thug" he met in India whom Meadows claims is now reformed, and then excerpts from Ali's own texts (never-to-be-sent letters to the woman he loves) and then also excerpts from newspaper articles about the murders. Late in the book, yet another narrator enters: much of the book's last section is told from the first-person perspective of an opium-addicted Irish ex-soldier who is married to an Indian woman Amir Ali knows. Which sounds, maybe, like too many narrative threads, too much shifting, but I didn't think it was: the perspective and what was happening always felt clear, and the shifts kept things interesting.

Another highlight of the book for me is the setting: Victorian London with its dank alleys and grand houses and the stinking Thames, and people from everywhere. I love passages like this:

Could one even talk, let alone plot, in this crowd, this roaring vortex in the heart of London, wondered John May. Or perhaps this was exactly where one could plot, so rife was the air with voices and sounds, the bustle of horses and omnibuses, the ladies and gentlemen trying their best to walk in bubbles through the milling crowd, the foreigners with their myriad tongues, the country squires riding in from Cumberland or Westmorland, the servants, grooms and lackeys running about, the waiters in the taverns shouting their orders, the potboys, beggars, lascars, hawkers, tinkers, gypsies, that omnipresent West Indian blackie wrapped in his strange garment, made of the rigging and sails of ships, who sang and sold handwritten songs signed 'January Monday'… Who would, who could overhear in the midst of this din? (67-68)

There's also lots of interesting stuff thematically: colonialism and racism and seeing what we want to see and hearing what we want to hear, but most of all a concern with narrative, with stories: the book says this of the author-figure's grandfather's house, but it's true of London too, and of the world in general:

What else but shadows and stories? For shadows accrete to stories as surely as stories emerge from shadows. (1)

Amir ends up in London because of a story, a fiction: he gains passage to England with Captain Meadows by claiming to have been part of a murderous religious cult, though the real story of his past and the reason he wants to leave India, which he narrates in his letters to his love, is something else entirely. But at one point in the book Amir feels like he's somehow become the thug he's pretended to be, like his telling the stories of his murderous past has somehow brought murderousness into being. ("When do we tell stories, and when do stories tell us?", he wonders (178).)

That said, there were chunks of this book that were slow going, though things really picked up when the narrative of the opium-addicted ex-soldier was introduced: at that point, the book started reading more like a straight mystery, as a certain subset of characters tried to find the identity of the murderer(s). The ex-soldier's wife is quite the detective, and if Khair wrote mysteries with her as the protagonist, I'd totally read them.

[John Brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a weird and often very wise book that has been well received and justly so. Set in Victorian London, it is a tale acutely depicting the delusions of Empire and the struggles of the colonized ‘niggers’ who find themselves in the city that is Empire’s epicentre. Sorry for the word – but prejudice and delusion become social via words, and that was the word used to denote anyone whose skin was less than white, be they from Africa, Asian sub-continent or West Indies. The word exemplifies a grossly presumptuous attitude and point of view.

The story revolves around a series of ghoulish murder/be-headings perpetrated in the service of the bogus “science” of Phrenology – an absurd early attempt at psychology (and qualitative ranking of racial differences) based on the shape of the human skull. At the time of this story, the needs of medical schools for stolen “resurrected” corpses was declining. But the Phrenologists were in a frenzy of “discovery” and they required ever more individualistic samples of skull shapes to feed their theories and debates. And there were people willing to go into the wretched areas of London in search of odd shaped heads, many of which belonged to new arrivals from every corner of the Empire.

The title refers to another so-called scientific effort, this more along the lines of what you might call “ethno-sociology”. Captain Meadows is a well-meaning, well-bred soldier who returns to London from his service in India. He has brought Amir, a young Indian who claims to have grown up in a Thugee family. The cult of Thugee was about ritual murder. Meadows will pay Amir to tell his story (and allow his skull to be endlessly measured and touched by fascinated Phrenologists); Meadows will turn Amir's report into an enlightening book... In the process, Amir falls in love with Jenny, a lower class white woman who is one of Meadow’s scullery maids. Also in the process, Jenny’s aunt, a wasted old hooker, becomes the first murder victim found without a head. As the murders increase, an opportunistic journalist and a blinkered cop believe the horrible epidemic has to be a ritualistic “cult” thing originating in the unruly immigrant community. Amir is accused and endures much indignity and tragedy. Finally members of his unseen community band together to resolve the situation.

This story is artfully put together via several intriguing voices. First the writer himself, speaking from the present, imagining and stitching together the thread from materials found in his grandfather’s library. The writer then hands us over to Amir… and to Meadows’ notebook… and to the presumptuous journalist… and finally to the Irish ex-solider living with an Indian woman who sees how to fix the problem because she sees that it is “a community problem”, not just Amir’s.

The writing is beautiful – you can feel the dank streets, the over-crowded rooms. The characters are vividly drawn, although, if I have a criticism, it’s that, apart from Amir, everyone is verging on cliche, most especially the presumptuous, racist Brits.

But the book works because Amir, at the crux of it, has compelling layers of complexity - he is a very modern individual trapped in a very retro world. And because the issues are interesting, both in the context of the time and place, and in how they reverberate to the present. The ending feels exactly right.

4 stars. Try it.

[Lakis Fourouklas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wouldn’t call The Thing about Thugs simply a crime novel, at least not in the traditional meaning of the term; it is so much more: a historic novel, a literary mystery, a meeting between the present and the past, and kind of a fairytale.

What one mostly enjoys in this book is not the suspense, even if there’s plenty, and it’s not the fast-pace, since it reads like a stroll in the park; it’s the setting, the writing and the characters that make all the difference.

The author doesn’t seem to be very interested in the mystery, since he lets the reader know who is who and what he or she does right from the start. He is mostly preoccupied with the themes of love, racial prejudice, social status, the rich and the poor.

He paints a pretty bleak picture of Victorian London where most of the action takes place, and it’s exactly this picture, this background that grants his tale its validity, which makes it sound a bit outlandish, but nevertheless true.

His characters are sophisticated and fools; men of means and women of leisure; thugs and murderers; servants and dreamers. And most of them are either hypocrites or liars.

Amir Ali, one of the major characters, falls into the latter category. He made up a story to escape his past and find a passage from poor and illiterate India to rich and enlightened England; a story that he almost came to believe himself; or rather a story that defined him: “In some ways, all of us become what we pretend to be,” he says.

He was supposed to be a thug back in his homeland. At least that’s what he said to Captain William T. Meadows, the man who saved him from a life of danger and chaos. But the truth is that he was only a novice, a protégé of a real thug, his uncle. He had to lie in order to avoid killing or being killed, and now, living in London, in a new world that he more than less likes, but doesn’t really comprehend, he comes to realize that his lie will come back to haunt him.

As a series of brutal murders start to take place in the city, during which the heads of the victims are stolen, all the suspicions of the police, largely thanks to the yellow press, fall on the immigrants. People talk about ancient, barbaric rituals being practiced in the dark alleys of the city, and a veil of fear seems to linger over it.

Amir is the prime suspect and he can do nothing to prove his innocence, not without betraying the trust of someone he loves. So he’s left with no choice; he has to become a fugitive of the law in order to survive and make things right. In this battle he’ll not be alone, as the other poor souls of the streets will hasten to his aid: a Punjabi woman, who’s a queen bee in her corner of the world, a mostly drunken Irishman, a few of his compatriots, the thugs and the poppers and the Mole People of London, the crowd that lives underground. They know that he’s a victim of the circumstances, and if they don’t want to become victims themselves they have to take things into their own hands.

This is great book in more than one ways, as it copes with many of the issues of that past -and this present- world, and puts them into perspective. The myth is rich, the plot more than interesting and the writing quite exquisite; a joy to read.