Displacement and Dislocation

By allowing her third person omniscient narrator access to all of her main characters, the author is able to use Abbas’s, Lucien Du Leze’s, Jehanne’s, and Rum’s experiences to develop her explorations concerning displacement and dislocation. She introduces these thematic notions within the context of Abbas’s storyline in the novel’s opening section “Srirangapatna, Mysore: 1794.” Because Abbas is just a young boy at the novel’s start, when “one of Tipu Sultan’s royal guards" suddenly “appears at the threshold” of his father’s shop demanding that he report to the Summer Palace for an audience with Tipu Sultan, Abbas’s life changes forever (4). Although he is flattered by the sultan’s desire to have him work with Du Leze on the tiger automaton, he is also overwhelmed by the prospect of leaving his home and family. He gradually...