The Cloud Messenger

Aamer Hussain

HarperCollins India,

208 pages, R250

London, that distant rainy place where his father once lived, is where Mehran finds himself after leaving Karachi. And it is there that his adult life unfolds: he discovers the joys of poetry, faces the trials of love and work, and spends his dreaming hours "sending cloud messages to other places". The novel is a poignant paean to lost love.