Animal's People by Indra Sinha

Best place to start...

For my first blog I thought I’d start with my all time favourite book, Animal’s People, an amazing fiction story by Indra Sinha that captures the devastating repercussions of a true event in India. The story is told by Animal, one of the most engaging, comical and conflicting characters that I have ever encountered in a book, and one that has also stuck with me since.

I was introduced to Animal’s People in my final year at Birmingham as one of the texts on a module about difference and normalcy. I then chose to write about the book in my coursework, and have recommended it to anyone and everyone, not just as a book for studying, but as a great book to read. I have put links to various blogs about the book so that you can read more about it, because I cannot do it justice on here as well as write about the reading experience.

The Print/Digital Experience

Apart from this being my favourite book, I also chose to write about it because Sinha has created some digital additions that can be read alongside the novel (which is incidentally only available in print form, published by Pocket Books in 2008). The websites http://www.khaufpur.com (not currently workingL) and http://khaufpur.wordpress.com/about/ were created by Sinha as tourist information and local newspaper sites about the fictional city that Animal lives in. There are interviews with Sinha as though he was the journalist who spoke to Animal, interviews and comments from Animal himself, and a variety of articles that set the scene of the novel. These continue the perception that Khaufpur is a real place and that Animal is a real person, and consequently draw attention to the fact that the issues raised in the book are real. So whilst I wouldn’t want to read the book from a screen, these digital extras do add a great deal to the experience.

One of Sinha’s great achievements in Animal’s People is the contradiction between fiction and fact; it is both a good read, and also an unsettling representation of a real city that needs to be noticed. Reading the book page by page as though it were any other fictional story actually adds to this understanding, because we are taking enjoyment and entertainment out of what is essentially other people’s suffering. But should we feel bad? Should we pity these poverty stricken, physically impaired characters? Should we admire them in a patronising ‘aren’t they good for making the most of what they have’ kind of way? Personally, I don’t think Sinha intends us to feel any of this. In Animal’s words, the book isn’t written so that ‘strangers in far off countries can marvel there’s so much pain in the world’, but to raise awareness so that we actively think about the issues. I guess what I’m trying to say is that reading this story as though it is a storybook is key to really getting it.

The novel starts with an editor’s note, which explains that Animal’s words were recorded in Hindu and then translated to English, and there is also a glossary at the back of the book which gives meanings for the Hindi, slang and Khaufpuri words that he uses. These create a contradiction between its presentation of Animal’s exact words, and its own ‘bookiness’. Could these extras be appreciated in eBook form? I personally enjoyed flicking to the back of the book to check the meaning for words as I was reading, something which cannot quite have the same effect on a tablet.

On the other hand, I became so drawn into the story that I felt the communication was two-way; I was an active listener for Animal as he told his story. In this sense, perhaps reading from a screen would make sense as we communicate much more through emails, social media, web calls etc than we do through written letters, and the digital means are much more interactive. This leads on to my only other argument for having this particular book available as an eBook; the issues raised do need to be talked about, and the easiest and most interactive way of doing this is through comments online. But, I guess, this is why Sinha set up a website…  

The Verdict

For me, this book is something I want to keep and cherish. It is not a throw away fiction story just to pass the time (not a criticism, I love an easy read!), because the story and its characters have stayed with me. I loved the print reading experience, though I also think the digital extras added a lot to the meaning. But what it comes down to, in my opinion, is that I definitely want this book on my bookshelf and not because it is particularly pretty or a classic, but because it is good.