Maria's Room

Goa. Beyond the sunny beaches, the music and the feni, lies a hinterland caught between the past and present. Here, soon after Liberation, the beautiful young Maria is swept off her feet by the French artist Marcel-an affair that ends in tragedy. Decades later, it is this dark, rain-lashed Goa that writer Raja Prasad arrives in as he flees from the dreariness of his own life. It is here that he encounters Maria-a name that is whispered into his ear from a past as treacherous as the ghosts he dares to confront; a woman as enigmatic as the land itself. As he settles down to write his second novel, Raja stumbles on to the mystery surrounding Maria's death. And in the process he uncovers secrets of his own... Dramatic and intense, Maria's Room is a tale of love and memory; of the drunken Fritz and the inscrutable Milton, the delectable Lorna and the frail Ruma; of a father's fear and a son's turmoil. It is the story of a man's struggle to make sense of himself and the world.