Publisher's Synopsis
An idyllic, generously breast-fed childhood is shattered by violence and virtual orphanhood when 6 year old Vijay Prabhu is delivered into the care of nuns running a boarding school in the coconut-palmed semi-catholic enclave of Mangalore in southern India. The nuns, no Mother Teresas, beat him mercilessly for his sin -- a biological sin over which he has no control. Later, Jesuit priests thrash him for assorted sins. It is this violence, this deprivation of love, and a long separation from his adored mother that prod Vijay to question the meaning of sin, while laying the foundation for one of the most honest, stunning, widely-praised, and erotically charged Indian novels ever.
