Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White Man Eating Tiger Toy Machine!!!

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01 October, 2011

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Daljit Nagra

Faber and Faber,

64 pages, R599

In his second collection of poems, the award-winning Daljit Nagra takes his cue from the 18th century automaton (a tiger savaging a British soldier), made for Tipu 'Tiger of Mysore' Sultan, and creates his own inimitable linguistic bhaji. Shakespeare meets the subcontinent in a range of forms, from English sonnets to spectacular displays of ‘bollyverse’. Little escapes Nagra’s tigerish gaze: race relations, family feuds, cultural inheritance, religious bigotry, the British honours system, Rudyard Kipling and the blurring of Kevin Keegan with kabaddi.