A Son of the Circus

Начало книги

This novel isn’t about India. I don’t know India. I was there only once, for less than a month. When I was there, I was struck by the country’s foreignness; it remains obdurately foreign to me. But long before I went to India, I began to imagine a man who has been born there and has moved away; I imagined a character who keeps coming back again and again. He’s compelled to keep returning; yet, with each return trip, his sense of India’s foreignness only deepens. India remains unyieldingly foreign, even to him.

My Indian friends said, “Make him an Indian—definitely an Indian but not an Indian.” They told me that everywhere he goes—including where he lives, outside India—should also strike him as foreign; the point is, he’s always the foreigner. “You just have to get the details right,” they said.

I went to India at the request of Martin Bell and his wife, Mary Ellen Mark. Martin and Mary Ellen asked me to write a screenplay for them, about the child performers in an Indian circus. I’ve been working on that screenplay and this novel, simultaneously, for more than four years; as of this writing, I’m revising the screenplay, which is also titled A Son of the Circus, although it isn’t the same story as the novel. Probably I’ll continue to rewrite the screenplay until the film is produced—if the film is produced. Martin and Mary Ellen took me to India; in a sense, they began A Son of the Circus.

Читать дальше →