Novel by international writer Latha Viswanathan. “Through the eyes of her aging narrator, a preserver of temples, visionary and blind at turns, Viswanathan explores a great range of feeling and modes of disquiet around contemporary India’s relationship to religions, its conflicts, and its socially restrictive past and present. She has done something paradoxical, even magical here: She’s s created a great guide to the crumbling and raided shrines of a civilization, and to the elements poised to undermine tradition, foreign and domestic. In depicting decline, however, she has preserved the great wisdom behind the images, statues, and rituals: her story, itself, embodies it.”—Moira Crone, author of The Ice Garden and The Not Yet “Whether she is writing about North America or India, a middle aged musician or a young boy, Latha Viswanathan’s prose is unfailingly vivid, tender and intelligent, full of sensual details and pungent insights.”—Margot Livesey, author of Mercury “I have read a number of works by Indian or Indian-American writers and find Latha’s among the best. She has such a sympathetic but unsparing view of the interface between two cultures, and an eye for detail that draws the reader in immediately and is also rather eye-opening.”—Diane Johnson, author of Persian Nights
