Man On Fire by Stephen Kelman, book review: Pain and its passport to inner peace

Man on Fire, the follow-up to Stephen Kelman's Man Booker shortlisted Pigeon English, is a two-hander yoking John Lock, a diffident, disappointed Englishman, to Bibhuti Nayak, the sort of exuberant, Indian semi-mystic who might beggar belief if his extraordinary accomplishments weren't inspired by actual events. Despite his near-philosophical name, Lock is a lettings agent in late-middle age, whose marriage has been hobbled by the loss of a baby and who, as the action starts, is confronting his own death by bowel cancer.