The Far Field

Shalini is a 30-year-old Bangalore woman whose mother has just died, leaving her unmoored. She travels to a remote Kashmiri village in search of Bashir Ahmed, a Kashmiri salesman who used to visit her family's home during her childhood and who she believes can explain her mother's depression and unhappiness. The book braids Shalini's Bangalore upper-middle-class childhood, her present journey through Kashmir during military lockdown, and the slowly emerging story of what passed between her mother and Bashir. Vijay's debut won the JCB Prize for Literature in 2019.