A Spirited Debacle

The title of Michael Eddy’s smart, sprawling, and very funny first novel refers to a jewel. Plucked from a ten-year-old maharaja during the British annexation of Punjab, couriered to England by Lord Dalhousie — whose father founded the Nova Scotia university — the Koh‑i‑Noor eventually worms its way inside the cross pattée of various crowns made for British royalty, “a talisman of success in a prehistory of brutality.” It’s also the name of a new telecommunications system and line of self-charging phones from Hulitron, a fictional electronics company.

The phones enjoy little airtime in Koh‑i‑Noor, but as symbols larded with history, these solar-powered gadgets, each a “palm-sized crystal prism,” with their promises of sustainability and regenerative power, speak volumes. Political agency mobilizes through usage — or, to call on a less corporate word, community. A Hulitron spokesperson declares that they “will be dictating the terms of global energy!” These...