Questions of tolerance, identity and discrimination abound in this quietly discomfiting novel. Entrepreneur Anil Mehrotra has a thriving import-export business, run with the help of the extremely capable and reticent Ahmed. But the serenity of their working relationship is shattered when Mehrotra discovers something unexpected about his trusty lieutenant. A vital novel for our times of intolerance, even at the hands of the seemingly “liberal”, Tabish Khair raises, within its slim pages, the question of what it means to be Muslim in India today.