Decolonisation, cultural restitution and repatriation are increasingly hot topics, dividing the world of culture and politics. From the Benin bronzes to the Koh-i-Noor diamond, books such as Dan Hicks’s The Brutish Museums and Sathnam Sanghera’s Empireland have studied extractive colonialism and questioned how cultural artefacts have travelled to, and been curated within, collections in western museums – often alongside distorted versions of their origin stories, or without credit where it’s due.
American author Tania James’s entertaining and erudite third novel Loot imagines the roots and routes of one such object: the automaton Tipu’s Tiger, one of the most contentious displays in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It foregrounds the stories and journeys of individuals and objects that are frequently mere footnotes in the history of empire.
Set at the turn of the 18th century, opening in Mysore in southern India, then crossing seas to a small town in France and a big estate in England, this expertly researched and intricately crafted story follows a poor woodcarver and toymaker named Abbas. When the 17-year-old gets unwittingly involved in a plot against Tipu, the Sultan of Mysore, a French clockmaker at Tipu’s court called Lucien Du Leze notices his skill. Abbas’s life is spared and soon he becomes Du Leze’s apprentice, tasked with co-creating a mechanical tiger in six weeks.
The other innovations Tipu has commissioned have mostly been for military, technological or educational advancement. “This one extends the imagination,” says Tipu – as the tiger, a symbol of the sultan’s reign, ceaselessly bites down on the neck of an English soldier. Loot similarly sinks its teeth into the messy legacies and histories of colonialism, as James replicates the colonial encounter of Tipu’s Tiger by returning the western gaze, asking new questions about ancient objects and affording visibility to their creators.
For in creating the automaton, Abbas has risen past his station, surprising the royal court, but especially himself. “Something has shifted in him, the emergence of some new possibility, a future of making more than toys and figurines. Is it the effect of living in the Summer Palace … of gazing out at the horizon and wondering what lies beyond that line?”
But Abbas’s dreams are snipped too soon; the 1799 siege of Srirangapatna, when Mysore falls at the feet of British soldiers, is what’s on the near horizon. It changes the course of his destiny, as Tipu’s Tiger is taken away on a journey across seas and continents – colonial plunder shipped off to the home of a British soldier. Abbas barely survives, eventually arriving in France to seek refuge and reunite with Du Leze. A chance encounter leads him to Du Leze’s goddaughter Jehanne, and the epiphany that he must reclaim his elusive creation, and also his true identity as an artist. “The worst offence he can think of would be to waste his God-given gift. The burning thing within him. The burning that brought him this far and that he must go to any length to make visible – not only to himself but to the unkind world.” A world, of course, in which “race is the final ranking”.
Following his heart and gut, he hatches a plan with Jehanne to steal back Tipu’s Tiger from the soldier’s rich widow. The rest of the novel is a cinematic love story, adventure story and heist story. In the west, Abbas is presumed to be a con artist; he is too ordinary – too low-born, too brown – to have created something as extraordinary as Tipu’s Tiger. Through transporting prose, and with wit and charm, Loot asks who gets written out of history and why.
Near the beginning of the novel, we’re told that Tipu’s kingdom has barely survived the most recent war with the English, and talk of another is always on the horizon. “The people never know who is coming from where to take what from whom. All they can do is submit to power each time it changes hands […] With every alteration, large and small, the ground unfirms itself beneath their feet, making it nearly impossible for anyone to leave a lasting mark.” In a world where most struggle to be remembered, Abbas holds on to the belief that he must make something indestructible, “have that small power over the grave”. If this refusal of submission isn’t a kind of rightful restitution – a taking back of the dignity of one’s life – what is?
• Loot by Tania James is published by Harvill Secker (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
