Siddhartha Deb Books in Order

A disturbing photograph sends journalist Amrit Singh from Calcutta into a remote corner of northeastern India. Pursuing the woman in the image, he encounters insurgency, violence, and a mysterious organization, finding that each apparent discovery makes the truth harder to grasp.

Through portraits of people living at different levels of Indian society, Deb examines the promises and costs of economic transformation. Their working lives reveal the distance between spectacular wealth, precarious aspiration, and the struggles hidden beneath national success stories.

In near-future Delhi, Bibi searches for a supposedly dead man linked to secret government documents. Her story intersects with an assassin in Bhopal, a student in partition-era Calcutta, and a British soldier, revealing strange connections across India's violent history.

Traveling across India, Deb interviews nationalists, insurgents, dissidents, and public figures to examine the growth of Hindu authoritarianism. He explores how religious politics, technology, and economic inequality interact, while profiling people resisting the pressures he sees threatening democratic life.

In northeastern India, Babu tries to understand his estranged father, Doctor Dam, as the older man declines. Moving backward through their lives, the novel follows family tensions and the political and ethnic divisions that have shaped their sense of belonging.