A Son of the Circus

Set in contemporary India, John Irving’s work of literary fiction A Son of the Circus (1994) follows Dr. Daruwalla, an orthopedic surgeon who travels back home to his native Bombay to study achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism. Dr. Daruwalla also finds himself thrown into a murder mystery—he works as a ghostwriter for a Hindi movie company, and the character he created for a movie series, Inspector Dahr, has sparked a serial murderer to run rampant. Trying to intervene, Dr. Daruwalla ends up interviewing a number of strange characters, including prostitutes, orphans, and children sold into bondage.

As the novel begins, Dr. Daruwalla is in Toronto. Daruwalla has spent most of his adult life in Canada, studying to become an orthopedic surgeon, but he has never truly felt at home there. Born in Bombay, he also feels distanced from his native city—he is a man stuck between places, never quite one thing or another.

Daruwalla, particularly interested in the study of dwarfism, discovers that it may be possible to isolate the gene responsible for achondroplasia, a condition in which the arms and legs are shortened, but the torso and head are average-sized. Daruwalla remembers growing up among people suffering from this condition, many of whom worked for traveling circuses that moved across the East Indian countryside. Daruwalla returns to Bombay to live among some of these circus folks, in order to test blood samples from the dwarves.



Back in Bombay, Daruwalla finds a completely different world than the one he left behind in Toronto. He joins up with a circus, receiving permission from some of the dwarves to study their bones and to take blood samples. Living with one particular dwarf and his family, he spends ample time among the circus freaks who travel through the poverty-stricken but stunning Indian countryside.

In a twist of the plot, Daruwalla also writes for Hindi cinema. An amateur playwright, he has been providing plots for many years to a film franchise following Inspector Dahr. Daruwalla created the character after a man he thinks of as a son, whom he saved when he was a young boy—ironically, Inspector Dahr's character is universally loathed among cinemagoers.

The real mystery begins when a series of murders breaks out across India, inspired by the most recent Inspector Dahr film. Daruwalla is concerned, but even more concerning is the fact that, in true Hindi plot twist style, the real Inspector Dahr has a twin he doesn't know about. The secret identical twin was raised in Canada, and he travels to Bombay around the time of the murders hoping to become a priest in training. It becomes increasingly clear that both Inspector Dahr and his identical brother are in danger, as investigations break out across India and everyone joins the hunt.



Daruwalla interviews and lives among people from all walks of life in India, interacting with orphaned children, prostitutes, HIV positive street dwellers, and men who steal children to work in hard labor camps. The mystery provides a look into the lives of street folk and circus freaks in India and the harsh realities of their lives.

A best-selling American author from Exeter, New Hampshire, John Irving is best known for his works A Prayer for Owen Meany and Cider House Rules. He also won an Academy Award for adapted screenplay for his script of Cider House Rules. Five of his books have been made into films, and he has written more than twenty books altogether. In 2018, John Irving won the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. He has also received a Lambda Award and other honors.