FROM THE WINNER OF THE SUPRABHA MAJUMDAR PRIZE, THE SHARMILA GHOSH SMRITI LITERARY PRIZE IN AND THE 2018 HINDU PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION What is not in history is fiction—but fiction that is rooted in reality and moulded by memory in this case. Is this fantasy in the guise of a novel, or a dark chapter in the author's life, which got left out of his autobiography? Manoranjan Byapari wrote this book some years after his two-part memoir released and received much critical acclaim, and he left it to the reader to separate the real from what’s been imagined or shaped selectively by memory. It tells the story of Bengal and its people caught in the inexorable cycle of politics and crime, and in the tussle between the haves and have-nots. So, this novel is not just a supplementary text to the author's memoir. Sitting in the darkness of a prison cell, Byapari listens to the monologue of a disembodied voice. Is the owner of that voice the author's doppelganger?