A love triangle, a religio-racial apocalypse and an action thriller jostle for attention in Manil Suri's ambitious new novel

Manil Suri's ambitious new novel brings together an unusual love triangle, a religio-racial Mumbai apocalypse and an action thriller. "Brings together" seems more accurate than "blends", since the elements fight each other more than they get along. The opening is narrated by Sarita, separated from her husband Karun at a time of political crisis and social meltdown. The first thing she does is to buy a pomegranate, at an exorbitant price, and defends her possession of it with a devotion that seems excessive even when it is revealed that she used it in the past (following a tip from The Kama Sutra) to amplify Karun's rather muted sexual interest.

India has been invaded by China, its troops pouring through the northeastern frontier, and then by Pakistan. The UN forced the withdrawal of China (acting in concert with Pakistan all along), but Pakistan stayed put. Then cyber-attacks disabled many institutions, including computer networks, so that mobile phones and the internet packed up. In these circumstances, with nuclear warfare looming, no reaction can be described as normal, but fixation on the powers of fruit is a hard one to share.