Written in the early 1990s and published in 1996, Tabish Khair’s first novel strangely evokes the India and the world of the 2010s: rape in a public bus in Delhi, hyperventilating media, war against terror, an aggressive ‘Hindu’ right, intolerant Islamism, growing social differences, etc. But along with all that, it remains a novel teeming with life, angels, dead poets, humour, history, memorable characters, and the joyous sadness of our world that Khair always captures so well and ironically in his fiction.