Publisher's Synopsis
Fiction. Asian Studies. According to family legend, Kalya Lal is perhaps descended from a ghost. Raised abroad in the west, Kalya returns to her ancestral village in India, and into her life arrives an odd Greek Canadian entomologist who has come to study the quixotic fig wasp, native to the village's peculiar ecosystem. His name is Iskandar Diamandi and he is obsessed with the Indian march of Alexander the Great. In the life histories of both Alexander and the wasp, Iskandar sees hidden universal truths and his own roadmap to Destiny. But Iskandar has a secret, one that makes Kalya's ghost story seem banal in comparison. Deonandan is the author of Sweet Like Saltwater, winner of the Guyana Prize for Best First Work.