In these five haunting stories Vikram Chandra paints a remarkable picture of Bombay?its ghosts, its passions, its feuds, its mysteries?while exploring timeless questions of the human spirit. ? The stories are linked by a single narrator, an elusive civil servant, who, on each of five evenings, recounts an extraordinary tale to those seated around him in a smoky Bombay bar. In 'Shakti', two feuding business families are united by a forbidden passion; in 'Dharma', a soldier forced to save his life through a terrible act of self-mutilation returns to his home in Bombay to find it haunted by the spirit of a small boy; in 'Karma', a police inspector takes on a murder case and finds himself drawn further into spiralling layers of corruption and deceit. ? Tightly controlled and luminously written, this outstanding collection confirms Vikram Chandra as one of today's most exciting writers.