When the phone rings, Krishan discovers that his grandmother's caretaker, Rani, has been found dead at the bottom of a well in her northern village. In this Booker Prize nominee, the news arrives on the heels of an email from Anjum, an impassioned yet aloof activist Krishnan fell in love with years before while living in Delhi. As Krishan makes the journey by train into the war-torn Northern Province for Rani's funeral, so begins an astonishing passage into the world he left behind.