I could scarcely bear to look at her eyes. They promised such intimacies. - V. S. Naipaul

The novel is part of that Western concern with the condition of men, a response to the here and now. In India, thoughtful men have preferred to turn their backs on the here and now and to satisfy what President Radhakrishnan calls 'the basic human hunger for the unseen'. It is not a good qualification for the writing and reading of novels.

Though it was a comfort on occasion to play with the idea that outside this place a whole life waited for me, all the relationships that bind a man to the earth and give him a feeling of having a place.

Some lesser husbands built a latrine on the hillside.