The Tusk That Did the Damage

Tania James

Random House India

240 pages, Rs.499

This novel plumbs the moral complexities of the ivory trade in south India through the eyes of a poacher, a documentary filmmaker, and an infamous elephant known as the Gravedigger. Orphaned by poachers as a calf and sold into a life of labour and exhibition, the Gravedigger breaks free of his chains and begins terrorising the countryside, earning his name from killing humans and then tenderly burying them. Manu, a farmer’s son, loses his cousin to the Gravedigger’s violence, and is drawn into the world of poaching. Emma is a young American filmmaker who finds herself in her own moral grey area: a risky affair with the veterinarian who is her film’s subject.