WINNER OF THE 2019 JCB PRIZE FOR LITERATURE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 DSC PRIZE FOR SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE
An elegant, epic debut novel that follows one young woman''s search for a lost figure from her childhood, a journey that takes her from Southern India to Kashmir and to the brink of a devastating political and personal reckoning.
In the wake of her mother''s death, Shalini, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir. Certain that the loss of her mother is somehow connected to the decade-old disappearance of Bashir Ahmed, a charming Kashmiri salesman who frequented her childhood home, she is determined to confront him. But upon her arrival, Shalini is brought face to face with Kashmir''s politics, as well as the tangled history of the local family that takes her in. And when life in the village turns volatile and old hatreds threaten to erupt into violence, Shalin
