Mr. Jacobs: A Tale of the Drummer, the Reporter, and the Prestidigitateur

Peter Briggs, world-weary correspondent for the Calcutta Jackal, thought he'd catalogued every variety of colonial lunatic roaming British India until Mr. Jacobs blew into his life. This improbable gentleman arrives trailing wives, charm, and an inexhaustible appetite for chaos. When Jacobs proposes a tiger hunt, the skeptical reporter finds himself drawn into a wildly ill-conceived expedition through the jungle, accompanied by a drum-beating musician and a magician whose tricks may be considerably more real than professional. What follows is a succession of comic catastrophes, romantic misfires, and increasingly absurd encounters with the eccentrics who populate this sun-addled corner of empire. Bates deploys his characters like pieces on a board, watching with evident delight as their best-laid schemes collapse into glorious disaster. The satire cuts both ways: at British pretension and at the charming roguery that defies it. It's a book that knows exactly how foolish people can be and finds that knowledge genuinely funny.