The Tusk That Did the Damage

One of the most unusual and affecting books... a compulsively readable, devastating novel.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Spectacular... Tania James is one of our best writers, and here she is at the height of her powers: brilliant, hilarious, capable of the most astonishing cross-cultural interspecies ventriloquies and acrobatic leaps of empathy. You will read this ravishing novel in an afternoon and immediately want to press it on your favorite people.

Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!

A novel of great moral intensity, with the pacing of a thriller. Everyone is implicated. Everyone is righteous. Tania James’ gift, her genius, is to turn this scenario into an occasion for grace.

Julie Otsuka, author of When the Emperor was Divine

Ivory trading, poaching, an escaped elephant, a risky love affair, all set in rural South India and "blend[ing] the mythical and the political"—this novel seems to have it all

The Millions

The Tusk That Did the Damage will leave you breathless as you follow three narrators across the wild plains of India. A poacher, a documentary filmmaker, and an elephant called Gravedigger all illuminate the complexities of the country and culture, and you’ll be stunned by the author’s portrayal of the magnificent, tusked animals central to the character’s lives

Time Out New York

James is such a talented author; she manages to bring these disparate viewpoints together forming a meaningful narrative and an engrossing story culminating in an elegant ending

Sunriver Books

Lusciously written... a thoroughly readable novel that refuses to provide a simplistic perspective on the brutality of elephant poaching

Metro

Impressive...sharp and unnerving sensibility. James offers a captivating rendering of an animal's point of view. Assured and skillful

New York Times Book Review

A remarkably accomplished novel

Mick Herron, Geographical

Heart-racingly paced...Narrated in part by a pachyderm, it paints a vivid picture of conservation and corruption..a story that moves...with grace and humour, as light-footed as a poacher

National Geographic Traveller

In The Tusk That Did the Damage, James grounds a moral investigation in fallible human (and animal) emotionality: her prose is simple and beautiful, and her characters, both human and pachyderm, are lovingly rendered.

Bustle

With lyricism and suspense, Tania James animates the rural landscapes where Western idealism clashes with local reality... In James’ arrestingly beautiful prose, The Tusk That Did the Damage blends the mythical and the political to tell a wholly original, utterly contemporary story about the majestic animal, both god and menace, that has mesmerized us for centuries.

Book Riot

This gorgeously written novel is unlike anything I’ve ever read, and unlike anything you’ve ever read too.

Glamour

A bighearted, morally complex novel

San Francisco Chronicle

This narrative braiding makes the book nearly impossible to put down. And especially given the cross-cultural, cross-species scope of James’s novel, the technique gets closer to how such events take place in our world...enthralling

LA Review of Books

[An] intriguing, tightly plotted story

Newsday

Impressive

Tishani Doshi, Guardian

[A] layered, affecting novel

Washington Independent Review of Books

Impressive

Rachel Dwyer, The Times Literary Supplement

Told in a language that is both lyrical and stark The Tusk that Did the Damage should win Tania James praise and laurels from those readers who long for a more penetrating look at environmental issues and the moral questions which accompany them’.

Joe Phelan, Bookmunch

One of the most compelling and unusual novels I've read this year.... A fascinating story of hunters and observers, old mythical gods and modern politics.

Sarah Hall, Guardian, Book of the Year