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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →John Irving’s A Son of the Circus is worth revisiting for more than its unusual Indian setting. Its murder plot shares the stage with Hindi crime films, separated twins, a missionary’s return to Bombay and the lives of people at the margins. The result, as Scroll reviewer Sarojesh Mukherjee put it in 2017, is “Many stories, like many Indias”: an expansive novel about storytelling, observation and the difficult question of where a person belongs.
What the novel follows
Published in 1994, A Son of the Circus centers on Dr. Farokh Daruwalla, born to a Parsi family in Bombay. He leaves before Indian independence to study medicine in Vienna, later settles in Canada with his Austrian wife, and periodically returns to India. There, his work brings him into contact with traveling circuses and with poor, crippled children and dwarfs he treats.
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Daruwalla also writes screenplays for Hindi crime films featuring Inspector Dhar. In Mukherjee’s account, murders in those fictional films begin to echo real crimes. At the same time, Martin Mills, an American missionary arriving in Bombay, is mistaken for John Daruwalla, his unknown twin. These strands interlock rather than proceeding as a single, tightly bounded investigation.
Why it rewards a return visit
The plot leaves room for a wider portrait
The book’s appeal lies partly in how much it lets coexist: crime, film, family, religion, circus life and social observation. The review highlights a Jesuit school, twins separated at birth and the Inspector Dhar stories alongside Daruwalla’s search for belonging. Its excursions can feel like digressions from a conventional mystery, but they are also how the novel widens its view of the people and institutions around the plot.
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Its India is encountered through particular details
Mukherjee describes the novel as recalling a pre-cellphone, pre-liberalization Bombay and India of the 1980s and 1990s. Ambassador taxis, telegrams and clubs appear beside modern media. Those are details in the reviewer’s reading, not a comprehensive account of the country or a substitute for a historical survey. They give a reader returning to the book a way to notice how its settings and social worlds are constructed.
It turns an outsider’s perspective toward belonging
Daruwalla’s life spans Bombay, Vienna and Canada, and his repeated returns make belonging a lived tension rather than an abstract theme. Mukherjee frames this as “Reversing the gaze”: an American writer’s novel set in India can prompt readers to consider who is observing whom, and how an outsider’s imagination engages with the people it portrays. The review praises Irving’s imaginative range and compassion toward people at society’s margins; that is its assessment, not a claim about critical consensus.
Rank #2
What to expect from Irving’s recurring interests
The review identifies familiar Irving concerns in an unfamiliar setting: religion and conversion, sexual mores, seduction, dwarfs and circuses. It also notes the absence of some motifs associated with other Irving novels, including bears and wrestling. The combination makes the book recognizable as Irving’s work without simply repeating the setting and texture readers may expect from him.
Bharati Mukherjee’s endorsement, reproduced on the publisher’s page, captures one aspect of its tone: “The story of circus-as-India is told with gusto and delightful irreverence.” That characterization points to the novel’s exuberance, though its many plotlines and extended excursions may suit readers who enjoy a broad, digressive narrative more than those seeking a spare mystery.
Rank #3
Page count depends on the edition
Page totals differ across records and editions. Scroll’s 2017 review describes the novel as 830 pages. Penguin Random House lists 672 pages for its Ballantine Books paperback, published June 23, 1997, ISBN 9780345417992. The latter figure applies to that edition, not every copy; pagination and availability can vary by edition and market.
Quick Recap
Best Value
- Scroll’s 2017 review by Sarojesh Mukherjee provides the discussion of the plot, setting and reasons to revisit the novel.
- Penguin Random House’s edition page lists the Ballantine paperback details and reproduces Bharati Mukherjee’s endorsement.
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