Synopses & Reviews
From the critically acclaimed author of Atlas of Unknowns and Aerogrammes,
a tour de force set in South India that plumbs the moral complexities
of the ivory trade through the eyes of a poacher, a documentary
filmmaker, and, in a feat of audacious imagination, an infamous elephant
known as the Gravedigger.
Orphaned by poachers as a calf and
sold into a life of labor and exhibition, the Gravedigger breaks free of
his chains and begins terrorizing the countryside, earning his name
from the humans he kills and then tenderly buries. Manu, the studious
younger son of a rice farmer, loses his cousin to the Gravedigger’s
violence and is drawn, with his wayward brother Jayan, into the sordid,
alluring world of poaching. Emma is a young American working on a
documentary with her college best friend, who witnesses the porous
boundary between conservation and corruption and finds herself in her
own moral gray area: a risky affair with the veterinarian who is the
film’s subject. As the novel hurtles toward its tragic climax, these
three storylines fuse into a wrenching meditation on love and betrayal,
duty and loyalty, and the vexed relationship between man and nature.
With
lyricism and suspense, Tania James animates the rural landscapes where
Western idealism clashes with local reality; where a farmer’s livelihood
can be destroyed by a rampaging elephant; where men are driven to
poaching. In James’ arrestingly beautiful prose, The Tusk That Did the Damage
blends the mythical and the political to tell a wholly original,
utterly contemporary story about the majestic animal, both god and
menace, that has mesmerized us for centuries.
Review
“Brisk as a thriller. . . . Although the focus is primarily on poaching,
the story’s true subject is larger and more profound: How do humans and
animals — whose lives at times seem at cross purposes — co-exist? . . .
[James’s] elephants loom larger than life.” The Washington Post
Review
“Inventive. . . . Remarkable . . . delves into India’s mythic, troubled
history with elephants — a strange marriage of reverence and violence — and
asks readers to imagine the incomprehensible, to experience the world,
for a few moments, through the eyes of a killer elephant called the
Gravedigger.” Los Angeles Review of Books
Review
“Enchanting. . . . Bighearted, morally complex. . . . James skillfully
blends the suspense of a thriller and the erotic tensions of two
romantic triangles with mythical, mournful flashbacks.” San Francisco Chronicle
Review
“Impressive. . . . A captivating rendering of an animal’s point of view.” The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
TANIA JAMES is the author of the novel Atlas of Unknowns and the short-story collection Aerogrammes. Her fiction has appeared in Boston Review, Granta, Guernica, One Story, A Public Space, and The Kenyon Review. She lives in Washington, DC.