The Japanese Wife

An Indian man writes to a Japanese woman. She writes back. The pen friends fall in lover and exchange their vows over letters, then live as man and wire without ever setting eyes on each other – their intimacy of words rested finally by life’s miraculous upheavals.The twelve stories in this collection are about the unexpected. An American professor visits India with the purpose of committing suicide, and goes on a desert journey with the daughter of a snake charmer. A honeymooning Indian couple is caught up in the Tiananmen Square unrest. A Russian prostitute discovers her roots in the company of Calcutta revolutionaries. A holocaust victim stands tall among strangers in a landscape of hate.These are chronicles of memory and dreams born at the crossroads of civilization. They parade a case of angels and demons rubbing shoulders with those whose lives are never quite as ordinary as they seem.