This complex, convoluted story, set in Conchin, now Kerala, South India, concerns an unorthodox family. Ammu, the mother of two children, Estha and Rahel, is English while her husband Poppachi is orthodox Brahmin Hindu. As the story opens a funeral is being held for Estha and Rahel's cousin Sophie Mol. The children are allowed to go to the ceremony but cannot sit with the family because of their mixed background. A Brahmin in India follows a very strict life bound to customs and rules of the top caste -- and above all must not marry out of caste -- so life for the family is a continuing tangle of the manners and customs of their crossed cultures. Descriptions of the landscape and the bazaars are vivid and make one long to see this resplendent land. Roy's writing exercises an intriguing flight of mind and uses the modern range of tricks, such as sentences forming a pyramid.