The Thing About Thugs, Tabish Khair’s third novel, is a multi-layered narrative set simultaneously in Victorian London and contemporary Phansa, Bihar. The novel is narrated by a boy sitting in his grandfather’s library in a whitewashed house in Phansa as he pieces together the story from the fictitious William T. Meadows’s Notes on a Thug: Character and Circumstances (1940), newspaper clippings, and letters written in Farsi by the main protagonist, Amir Ali addressed to his English girlfriend, Jenny (referred to as “Jaanam” by Amir Ali). The novel recounts the experiences and confessions of the protagonist, Amir Ali, as he travels to London with the phrenologist Captain William T. Meadows while claiming to be an ex-Thug, a former member of the oriental Thugee cult. Phrenology is the study of the bone structure of the head and is based on the belief that one can read character from the skull’s formation. Amir Ali lies about his identity to escape a family feud in India. Captain Meadows offers to take him to London to understand how a man with a skull whose shape predisposes him to crime can be reformed by imbibing English (colonial) values.