Animal's People (2008)

Shortlisted for 2007's Man Booker Prize, Indra Sinha's second novel, Animal's People, describes the chaotic life in a modern-day Bhopal slum. Animal, a man with a ruined spine who darts up alleys on all fours and begs for food like a dog, is our spirited guide to a neighborhood reeling from the 1984 Bhopal industrial disaster and the aftermath of corruption. Though he introduces so many characters that not all of them come fully alive, Sinha takes us into a wildly unfamiliar world — there's a seven-page glossary covering local slang — and Animal is about as delightfully 
 human a narrator as one could hope to find. B+