Quixotic nonconformists in small towns and young newly-weds trying to keep up with the times; a forlorn retiree helpless in the face of contemporary anger and a middle-class woman’s bond with her maid. Fourteen well-crafted stories give us a sense of the daily life of a wide cast of characters. Hasan’s protagonists are, as always, inward-looking, and whimsical and vulnerable outliers. Where is their place in the new order, where have they come from and where are they going? Quietly devastating, subtly subversive and wonderfully wry. Skillfully interweaving India’s many separate and rapidly changing worlds, Anjum Hasan brings an ironic and subtle intelligence to a great novelistic theme: superfluous men and women lurching out a decayed old order, exposed to the conflicts and tensions of an endless transition.