Who gets to create art? Can political freedom exist without personal freedom? Man Booker Prize-longlisted author Anuradha Roy’s fourth novel tells the story of Myshkin, a horticulturist irrevocably changed by the departure of his mother, who leaves her stifling husband and familial responsibilities when he is a child, for a life that allows her the freedom to be an artist. Spanning the years of the independence movement in India and the rise of Nazism in Germany, this accomplished novel holds concerns of female agency and nationalism at its heart.