A Son of the Circus is a novel by John Irving written and/or published in 1994. Though the setting is Mumbay (Bombay) India and though the book describes the "Blue Nile" circus in details the novel has many other lines of stories, of which the most important is the growing human understanding in the main character, Farrokh Daruwalla. It has a crime-story which links together most of the other story-lines: A series of murders take place in Bombay and nearby places, but when it comes to the club of upper-class people and the stepson of Daruwalla is threatened the serial killings are researched by a sympathetic criminal inspector who long ago married a girl, who had witnessed one of the murders. Another story line concerns twin brothers who do not know each other at first. One is a famous movie actor starring in the Inspector Dhar series, which are scripted by none other than Dr. Daruwalla, the other is a Jesuit who comes to Mumbay, causing all sorts of confusion. The Jesuit gets on everyone's nerves. The two brothers meet when the Jesuit apprentice leaves his religious ambitions.
References
An interview where Irving tells about how he considers the characters of his novels, including "A Son of the Circus", to be a product not of imagination but of keen observations.
