A son of the circus
By: John Irving.
Publisher: Black Swan
Published: 1995
Place of publication: London, Great Britain
Language: eng
Number of pages: 832
Copyright date: 1994
Description: IRVING HAS GIVEN US THAT TREAT OF TREATS, A WIDE- RANGING FICTION OF MASSIVE DESIGN AND LENGTH THAT ENCAPSULATES OUR WORLD WITH INTELLIGENCE AND SUGARS THE PILL WITH WIT David Hughes, Mail on Sunday 

Born a Parsi in Bombay, sent to university and medical school in Vienna, Dr Farrokh Daruwalla is a Canadian citizen - a 59-year-old orthopedic surgeon, living in Toronto. Periodically, the doctor returns to India; in Bombay, most of his patients are crippled children. 

Once, twenty years ago, Dr Daruwalla was the examining physician of two murder victims in Goa. Now, twenty years later, the doctor will be reacquainted with the murderer. 

Daruwalla's quest for the truth is what sustains this book...a writer with the courage to follow this difficult journey while also exploring issues of poverty, racism and disease in a novel so full of humour is a writer to be treasured' Erica Wagner, The Times

[Irving] is at the peak of his powers... he plunges the reader into one sensual or grotesque scene after another with cheerful vigour and a madcap tenderness for life... entertainment on a grand scale Economist 

Daruwalla is another iconic Irving figure... the good man in an inexplicable world... Irving handles this incarnadine combination of farce and horror with high speed skill, creating a compulsively readable book' Elizabeth Young, Guardian 

'Irving's popularity is not hard to understand. His world really is the world according to everyone' Time 

Cover illustration by Christopher Brown