“Fatboy Fall Down is very, very funny about the human foibles of pride, pretension and bombast; it is searingly wise about vulnerability, the ways we let our loved ones down, how we carry hurts from childhood, how we fall from grace and try to pick ourselves back up. Orbits, whose whole life unfolds in this masterful novel, is as vivid and alive as any character I have ever encountered in fiction. I love this novel!” — Lisa Moore

“A sad, comical tale, beautifully composed, describing the Sisyphean life-journey of a simple man on a simple island, shaped by casual cruelty and limited means.” — MG Vassanji

“What does it mean to live a life on the margins, circling but rarely connecting with those who ‘find their place’? Rabindranath Maharaj follows this painful question through the course of one man’s life, charting the rhythms of human experience against the backdrop of a lush and corruptible world.” — Alissa York, author of The Naturalist

A child ridiculed for his weight, a son overshadowed by a favoured brother, a husband who falls short of his wife’s ambitions, an old man with a broken heart… as Orbits’ life passes, he doggedly pursues a simple dream — a little place in the country where a family might thrive — while wondering if he can ever shake free of the tragedies that seem to define him. 

Fatboy Fall Down is the lush and heartbreaking musings of a man trying to understand his place in the world. Shot through with sadness and full of surprising moments of wry humour, Rabindranath Maharaj’s deft touch underscores the resilience of the human spirit.

“Heavy yet rewarding, Maharaj’s novel is a reminder that resilience takes many forms — and that most exceed our naming.” — Kirkus Reviews

“The vividness of island life, so richly conveyed, adds to the depth of this remarkable character study.” — Booklist

“In Fatboy Fall Down, Orbits gazes into the distance, hoping to escape the reality of who and where he is and what it all means.” — Foreword Reviews

“The very slightness of [Orbits’s] journey is perhaps what is most intriguing about this subtle and atmospheric novel: It is not exactly satisfying, but convincing, a tiny victory in the hot, long afternoon.” — The Globe and Mail

“Author Maharaj was born on the island of Trinidad, and he suffuses his novel with wonderful detail of the varied and exotic indigenous plants and animals of the West Indies. But most of all there is the spoken language of the characters, almost musical in its manner and rich in imagery . . . This is a quiet book that builds slowly, gradually taking on momentum and urgency, just as the passage of time seems so slow when we are young and so fleeting when we get older.” — New York Journal of Books