Loot

James (The Tusk That Did the Damage) offers a sweeping historical tale, tracing the creation, search for, and reclamation of a gruesome yet ingenious automaton. In late-18th-century Mysore, India, 17-year-old Abbas is taken from his home to the sumptuous palace of Tipu Sultan, known as the Tiger of Mysore. There, he is apprenticed to the French clockmaker Lucien du Leze and tasked with creating an automaton of a tiger attacking a British soldier. Then Tipu’s palace is looted by the British, and the tiger automaton is stolen. James’s novel draws on a real automaton called Tippoo’s Tiger, made in Mysore in the 1780s or 1790s and now displayed at London’s V&A Museum. Narrator Maanuv Thiara’s evocative voicework transports listeners to James’s lushly described landscapes as Abbas travels through India, France, and England in search of the automaton, which has joined a collection of looted artworks in the English countryside. Throughout this lively, fast-moving story, James deftly explores war, love, colonialism, and racial and cultural identity with humor, wit, and finesse.