The stories in this collection are set in India and in the United States but the characters are very much Indian. Like Prem in the title story who is unable to forget the paddy-field of his native Kerala even when he’s walking through the snow covered streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Like Shyam, in Spiders on the Wall, who cannot forget the surreal world of O. V. Vijayan’s cholera-infested streets of Khazak even when he’s watching Andre Agassi play in the US Open at New York. New York haunts the plot-line of another story, where the reader is left to discover a story buried in rubble of the World Trade Center. The stories transcend a wide spectrum of human experience. In Face to Face, even in the midst of a tedious forty-eight-hour journey from Trivandrum to Delhi, ‘two strangers in a coupe’ find a great deal to share with each other even though they do no exchange a word. Whereas in A Boat on the River, it’s a darker experience that unfolds to the beat of the ‘70s’ hit from Boney-M. A collection, which will leave the reader mesmerized!
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