That's Anil's path. She grows up in Sri Lanka, goes and gets educated abroad, and through fate or chance gets brought back by the Human Rights Commission to investigate war crimes.

Jung was absolutely right about one thing. We are occupied by gods. The mistake is to identify with the god occupying you.

The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion

The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.

Do you understand the sadness of geography?

We are expanded by tears, we are told, not reduced by them.

This last night we tear into each other, as if to wound, as if to find the key to everything before morning.