1914, Fiji: 25-year-old Akal Singh would rather be anywhere but this tropical paradise-or, as he calls it, 'this godforsaken island.' After a promising start to his police career in his native India and Hong Kong, Akal has been sent to Fiji as punishment for a humiliating professional mistake. Lonely and grumpy, Akal plods through his work and dreams of getting back to Hong Kong. When an indentured Indian woman goes missing from a sugarcane plantation and Fiji's newspapers scream 'kidnapping,' the inspector-general reluctantly assigns Akal the case, giving him strict instructions to view this investigation as nothing more than cursory. Akal, eager to achieve redemption, agrees-but soon finds himself far more invested than he ever expected. Now not only is he investigating a disappearance, but also confronting the brutal realities of the indentured workers' existence and the racism of the British colonizers in Fiji-along with his own thorny notions of personhood and caste. And early interrogations of the white plantation owners, Indian indentured laborers, and native Fijians yield only one conclusion: there is far more to this case than meets the eye. Nilima Rao's debut is full of sparkling wit, vibrant characters, intriguing mystery-solving, and fascinating historical detail, both unflinching in its treatment of the atrocities of colonialism and hopeful for a better future.
