In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman. The man was in fact German, but in small?town India in those days, all white foreigners were largely thought of as British. So begins the story of Myshkin and his mother Gayatri, a rebellious, alluring artist who abandons parenthood and marriage to follow her primal desire for freedom—a feeling that was in the air in 1930s India, even as the Nazis rose to power in Germany. In this novel from the author of the Man Booker Prize nominee Sleeping on Jupiter, Myshkin pieces together his long-lost mother's life on a journey that takes him through India and Dutch?held Bali, as he comes to understand her—and the world she wanted to escape.

"Lyrical, subtle, [and] finely observant…. A novel of history, both global and personal, gracefully wrought."—Kirkus Reviews