פרומותש, כימאי בנגלי צעיר, מגלה במקרה, תגלית העשויה להביא גאולה לעולם. הוא מצליח להפוך "זהב לדשא, אור ירח למרציפן". במקום להביא לו תהילה ועושר פותחת התגלית הזו שרשרת מוזרה של מאורעות הנפרסים על פני לונדון וכלכתה ומביאים מריחו של מיזוג התרבויות.
Sunetra Gupta is an acclaimed novelist, essayist and scientist. In October 2012 her fifth novel, So Good in Black, was longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. In 2009 she was named as the winner of the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her scientific achievements. Sunetra, who lives in Oxford with her husband and two daughters, is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University's Department of Zoology, having graduated in 1987 from Princeton University and received her PhD from the University of London in 1992. Sunetra was born in Calcutta in 1965 and wrote her first works of fiction in Bengali. She is an accomplished translator of the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore.
This book was incredibly difficult to read (I had tried to start it a few times and it only got another try because it was nice and small to take travelling). It is a tragedy. One asks the questions of why the people were where they were and with who they were. Sadly it is also of letting go hope and dreams I think.