Peter Karthak’s prose burns with energy in this dark, compelling novel that is simultaneously a meditation on postcolonial displacement and the nature of good and evil. Through his irresistible characters, whose emotional lives are dramatized in the flawed beauty of the “hill station†of Drjeeling, Karthak weaves a complex story that is at once suspenseful and reflective. It also marks him as a potent voice in Nepali literature in English.