"Herman seemed convinced it was a good story: sex, violence, political turmoil, the remoteness of the border, with the World War II campaign against the Japanese like a heavy, detailed backdrop in an old painting. These were Herman's terms, not mine." But encouraged by the prospect of working for a German magazine, eager to escape the confines of his routine at a Calcutta daily, journalist Amrit Singh sets off to investigate the story behind a photograph of a young woman being held captive by two machine-gun-wielding insurgents. His journey takes him to the farthest outposts of India, to a region governed by competing ethnic factions, corrupt officials, and various militias, to a place where nothing is as it seems, adrift in murky rumors of visionary man whose ideas promise prosperity and peace. As strangers with even stranger stories cross his path, as landslides, bus strikes and army checkpoints threaten to force him back, Amrit travels deeper into a besieged land, where "illusions mask an unbearable reality" in this atmospheric tale of fear and cynicism run amok.