An exceptionally moving novel that traces the arc of a man's life from his 1935 birth in a small village in India to his death from COVID-19 in 2020

Jadunath Kunwar's beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. While pregnant, his mother nearly dies from a cobra bite--and this is only the first of many challenges in store for Jadu. As his life skates between the mythical and the mundane, he finds meaning in the most unexpected places. He becomes a historian. He has a daughter who becomes a television journalist and then escapes her marriage for a career in the United States. And he sees currents of huge change sweep across India—from Independence to Partition, Gandhi to Modi, the Mahabharata to Somerset Maugham—in ways that Jadu is both apart from and can't help but represent.