Point of View

The novel is written primarily from the third person point of view. This predominant third person narrator assumes an omniscient status throughout the novel. This means that the narrator has access to the main characters’ consciousnesses, and thus shifts between this key cast of characters’ perspectives. Such shifts in the narrator’s attention at times take place between chapters, while at other times they occur within the course of the same chapter. The reader might refer to “Srirangapatna, Mysore: 1794,” Chapter 1, by way of example. For the first several pages of the chapter, the narrator is situated most closely to Abbas’s psyche. However, once he arrives at the Summer Palace and meets Tipu Sultan and Du Leze, the narrator’s attention shifts. For example, at the end of one passage, the narrator says “Without another word, [Abbas’s] father walked away clutching the umbrella like...