Refugees from Paradise

Refugees from Paradise addresses the ultimate mystery of our times: Does Paradise still exist? In Casa Mira, an unusual house of tenants in London, Jonathan Ferry, an actor and aspiring film-maker, is hunted by a story (like an aircraft, it `tilts inside his head every morning as he wakes up'). Meanwhile, Anjali Mehra, a television journalist in New Delhi, hunts after another on assignment. Their separate obsessions lead them to a village fair in Kenduli, Bengal, and to the Baul singer Krishnagopal, 150 years old or perhaps older, who once sang to a wounded pilot who fell out of the sky and into a jungle in Assam, where the mighty Brahmaputra roars like a demon. Where, in all this, is the road to paradise? Eventually it falls upon Milton, the venerable poet reborn as a cat, to detect a few remarkable things, and give us a glimpse of the grand design.