A huge hit in France and sold to 36 countries across the globe in its march to international bestseller status, The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe comes with a reputation as large as its whimsical yet high-concept title. It's deserved. Pulling off the high-wire act of beginning a debut just as the jacket promises – our Indian hero does indeed become encased in flatpack in the Paris showroom of the Swedish furniture store – and yet avoiding the pitfalls of irritating quirkiness is some feat.
Alarm bells certainly ring from the moment it's revealed that the bed of nails the fakir (in this meaning a trickster) wants to buy in Ikea is called Hertsyörbåk. Groan. But the reason Ajatashatru Oghash Rathod's adventure across Europe and North Africa works its way under the skin after its puppyish grab for attention is thanks to what happens next. Ajatashatru ends up on a goods lorry full of refugees being trafficked to England, and as he begins to move in a world of outsiders and illegal immigrants, the fakir slowly understands that tricking people is no way to lead a fulfilling life.
The tone remains wryly comic, however – and it works as a vehicle by which Puértolas can strike at the idiosyncrasies and downright flaws inherent in every country's attitudes and policies towards immigrants. Much credit here must go to Sam Taylor, whose well-judged translations of Laurent Binet's HHhH and Joël Dicker's The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair have brought French bestsellers to English-speaking audiences. In The Extraordinary Journey, Ajatashatru Oghash's name is continually mined for humour – "A-jar-of-rat-stew-oh-gosh" or "A-jackal-that-ate-you – which presumably, given the differences in phonetics between the languages, Taylor had to devise himself.
If poking fun at "foreign" names sounds troubling, Puértolas actually has his crosshairs firmly fixed at the kinds of people who have no intention of celebrating or even acknowledging difference and diversity. That's the real joy of this novel: its subtleties gradually become apparent. To begin with, Ajatashatru is annoying and shallow – and the novel itself isn't much more promising.
But his journey of self-discovery slowly reveals a fakir in search of love, honesty and a place to call home. Puértolas is a former French border guard involved in investigating illegal immigration networks in Paris, and his debut, written on a mobile phone between shifts, asks for a better understanding of underground migration in much the same way as Michael Winterbottom's well-judged 2002 drama, In This World. As the chapter in which Ajatashatru first meets the Sudanese "illegal aliens" underlines, it is "unsettling to live with constant fear in the gut".
Yes, Puértolas is not adverse to playful plot contrivance, the story-within-a-story device he employs halfway through to underline Ajatashatru's "change" is a bit vieux chapeau, and the slapstick set-pieces (an ice-cooler-wielding Parisian taxi-driver he tricks in the first few pages becomes his nemesis) are hit and miss. But An Extraordinary Journey is also that rare beast: a novel full of heart and conscience that never takes itself too seriously.
