Step on board the bus, make yourself as comfortable as you can and gaze—surreptitiously, of course—at the others around you. Try to imagine their stories and, as the bus starts, wait and watch and listen, greedily gleaning what clues you can from snatches of conversation, from the cut of clothes, from body language and luggage and appearances.

Conjure tales of a very angry bus driver, abandoned by his wife and going nowhere in his career; a sanctimonious conductor; a hijra, or eunuch, a remnant of India’s Muslim days; a nervous, half-Indian businessman clutching a briefcase full of cash; a right-wing Hindu matriarch; a young boy returning to his village after robbing his employer . . . Then, as the bus stops, and you witness a tragic event, discover how lives can be changed and futures gained or lost; how some stories end while others are yet to unfold.

‘It is a brave writer, and one worth paying attention to, who believes that a novel can be shaped and given meaning by what has been found in the commonplace, everyday world, even when this is seemingly no more than a bus journey in a provincial area of Bihar . . . The Bus Stopped is a novel that reflects the nature and circumstances of human mobility in our modern, unforgiving world.’—Outlook

‘Khair writes prose like a poet and constructs his book with the detailed, deceptively abstruse skill of a versemeister, the chapters winding and then unwinding like sonnets . . . He is a gifted writer, and a sorcerer of imagery.’—India Today

‘His tale is quintessentially a tale of transition, and he tells it very well—in short, crisp telegraphic sentences for most part of the time, with an endearing simplicity and candour.

His observations are sharp and to the point, capturing the essence of what is happening; it is part story-telling, part psychology, part sociology.’—The Hindu

‘There is much to enjoy here . . . The twist at the end is hilarious. Khair’s talent is as a miniaturist’—The Times

‘It’s a fine work: short, sweet and brutal’—Sunday Herald

‘A lyrical journey through small-town India’—Independent ‘[The Bus Stopped] allows stories to emerge with immediacy and leisure, with abrupt shafts of humour’—Guardian