Innocent and unremarkable, but for his near crippling obsessions with sex and running, Bhola goes through life falling for all the wrong people. At School, he lusts indiscriminately after his teachers, both male and female, and is equally attracted to eunuchs. While in college, he has vaguely demeaning affairs with his landlady, and a vegetable vendor-cum-nurse and her husband. Later, he marries (a woman with a voice like liquid gold), fathers a daughter and suspects he is close to balance and beauty. Then his past catches up with him.

Upamanyu Chatterjee’s genius for black humour and the absurd has never been more compelling than in this unforgettable portrait of a lost life.