These four stories, related but distinct, form a kind of emotional and cultural fugue, one that glances back from different vantage points to recurring melodies of modern cultural and intellectual experience. From Bombay to Berlin, Cambridge and Harvard to Wall Street, the elusive qualtities of contemporary historical consciousness is the scent that Bherwani's characters try to isolate and name. As Robert Morgan notes in his foreword: "Bherwani's fiction is global in the best sense, taking place across continents, across cultures, decades, across strata of wealth, employment, and education... These stories are both a record of the larger shifts of history and the wrenching, intimate unfoldings of particular lives."