style="overflow: hidden; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;">Tarun Tejpal, in his second novel, makes few concessions to the non-Indian reader. This quasi-autobiographical tale, ostensibly about a magazine editor targeted for assassination, bristles with Hindi swear words and references to life in Delhi that may at first baffle those unfamiliar with India. Perseverance pays. This richly detailed story transcends the narrow world of Delhi journalism to examine the modernisation and urbanisation of the world’s biggest democracy and the effects of these chaotic processes on India’s 1.2bn people.