'The pull of a Kalpish Ratna novel is undeniable, even hypnotic.'--The Telegraph What is the chill interface between violence and pseudo-science? What is the secret ingredient of the elixir of youth being doled out by a hakim at Leopold Café? Who was the Bombay Ripper, the notorious serial killer from the late-1800s? How does a fifteen-year-old widow's sati attempt result in the birth of an icon of the Hindu Rashtra? How much of love is real and how much hallucination when the object of one's affection is a spectre? In this thrilling mix of medical history and speculative fiction, the intrepid microbiologist Ratan Oak jumps between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, outwitting vedic scientists, brahminical eugenicists, lusty serial-killers and ghostly seductresses.