A Bengal tiger wakes up one morning realising he is ravenously in love. A pompous railway supervisor in a small Indian village bites off more than he can chew when a peculiar new clerk arrives on his doorstep. In another place and in another time, a secret agent who spends her days watching the front door of an unknown quarry discovers something she isn't meant to. An immigrant housewife in an American suburb geeing up for Thanksgiving makes a wish she may come to regret. And a small and famous country's only executioner claims his conscience is as clean as his heavy, washed stones.

With this glittering, savage and elegant first collection, where reality loops in mind-bending twists and dazzles with cinematic exuberance, where frayed photographs take on a life of their own and where elephants wish only to die with dignity, Rajesh Parameswaran bursts onto the literary landscape as an astonishing new talent.