The Cripple and His Talismans

June M. Blurton is a retired speech/language pathologist.

Anosh Irani’s first novel is set in Bombay, the city in which the
narrator loses his arm. For two months, he does not speak. Then he meets
Gura, a floating beggar, who sends him off on a quest to find his lost
arm. In the course of his search, the narrator encounters a variety of
colourful figures, including a chicken seller, the Emperor Akbar, an old
school acquaintance who has written a book on Shakespeare, a leper who
bites off a finger and presents it to the narrator, and a master of the
underworld named Baba Rakhu.

The descriptions are crudely vivid and sometimes amusing, as in
“mosquitoes [doing] a small dance to pass the time between
transmissions of malaria.” There may be a deeper meaning to this black
comedy, but on the surface only a fantasy or hallucination could
encompass these sights, sounds, and people. The Cripple and His
Talismans is a book for fans of magic realism.