A Son of the Circus: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) - Softcover

"His most entertaining novel since Garp."--The New York Times Book Review

"A Son of the Circus is comic genius . . . get ready for [John] Irving's most raucous novel to date."--The Boston Globe

"Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla, reared in Bombay by maverick foes of tradition, educated in Vienna, married to an Austrian and long a resident of Toronto, is a 59-year-old without a country, culture, or religion to call his own. . . . The novel may not be 'about' India, but Irving's imagined India, which Daruwalla visits periodically, is a remarkable achievement--a pandemonium of servants and clubmen, dwarf clowns and transvestite whores, missionaries and movie stars. This is a land of energetic colliding egos, of modern media clashing with ancient cultures, of broken sexual boundaries."--New York Newsday

"His most daring and most vibrant novel . . . The story of circus-as-India is told with gusto and delightful irreverence."--Bharati Mukherjee, The Washington Post Book World

"Ringmaster Irving introduces act after act, until three (or more) rings are awhirl at a lunatic pace. . . . [He] spills characters from his imagination as agilely as improbable numbers of clowns pile out of a tiny car. . . . His Bombay and his Indian characters are vibrant and convincing."--The Wall Street Journal

"Irresistible . . . powerful . . . Irving's gift for dialogue shines."--Chicago Tribune

Twenty years after he had been the examining physician of two victims of a transsexual serial killer, Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla leaves Toronto to return to his native Bombay and comes face to face with his own past and the murderer when he encounters a colorful cast of circus characters. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.