The stories in this collection all share protagonists who are at odds with the world or with the lives they are leading, marked by an immediately recognisable listlessness and dissonance with what’s around them: a retiree grows restless with the bickering family that moves in next door, a woman grapples with the final, mundane stages of grief, a wife finds herself disgusted by her husband’s meat-eating. Crafted with consummate skill by Hasan, these stories, set mostly in and around Bengaluru, are moving, wry, occasionally devastating and handled with the utmost empathy.