A Bad Character

There is more than one bad character in this darkly beautiful novel: the term could equally be applied to the city that forms its backdrop, Delhi, as well as the love interest to which it ostensibly refers.

With her mother deceased and her estranged father living in Singapore, 20-year-old Idha is sent to live with an "aunty" in Delhi, an old friend of her mother's. While Idha studies for a degree in an unspecified literature, Aunty is busy trying to find her a husband. But Idha finds the prescriptive and misogynistic world she now inhabits to be stifling. She longs for a real-life adventure which soon materializes in the shape of a dark and ugly young man with an animal sexuality.