Twelve-year-old Hari tries to make sense of his tumultuous and complex world in 1980s India. His experiment at eating fish leads to the accidental death of his grandmother; his preference for Hindi over his mother tongue Tamil leads to slanderous graffiti against his family in Madras; and his friendship with the family maid lands him in trouble with a militant Tamil film fan and political functionary called Vishu. Matters come to a head when MGR, a film star turned politician dies and his supporters led by Vishu declare a strike, trapping Hari and his mother in a train bound for Madras...

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Anand Mahadevan was born and raised in India. He came to Canada in 1996 and has been educated in the United States, Germany and Canada. He lives, writes and teaches in Toronto.

"Mahadevan engages all the reader's senses with writing that is vivid and exotic, very often erotic, and touched throughout with gentle humour. He writes with such compassion that while reading this book you will undoubtedly nod in recognition of your own family and loves and sometimes foolish self." --Gail Anderson-Dargatz, author of A Recipe for Bees

"Mahadevan's language often enters the realm of the poetic, allowing the reader to taste the slick oil of sizzling puris and the salted rust of trains . . ." --City Masala