Winner, Prix Millepages * Finalist, Prix Femina

A passionate story of obsession, seduction, betrayal and loss set against the brilliantly drawn backdrop of India at the turn of the millennium.

A young couple from a small town in India, penniless but gloriously in love, move to the big city, where the man works feverishly on a novel, stopping only to feed his ceaseless desire for his beautiful wife. In time the lovers abandon the city for an old house in the mist-shrouded Himalayas. While renovating their ramshackle new home, the young man unearths a chest full of diaries written by the previous owner.

Thrust into another world and time, he slowly uncovers the dark secrets at the heart of her story.

‘At last—a new and brilliantly original novel from India.’—V.S. Naipaul

‘The Alchemy of Desire puts Tarun Tejpal in the front rank of Indian novelists. I am inclined to agree with Naipaul: Tejpal has turned out a masterpiece. It is a novel that must be read.’—Khushwant Singh

Never been on such an emotional roller coaster. Thanks for giving me such a great time. May your efforts continue to be touched by magic.’—Naseeruddin Shah

‘A startling work of Nabokovian fiction’—The Hindu

‘One of the most attractive Indian writers in English of his generation, he writes with a great deal of raw energy, inventively employing images which are at once sad, haunting, horrendously comic and beautiful.’—Times Literary Supplement'A bold and weighty first novel . . . sex is practically a character in its own right here, endlessly examined in all its luscious, experimental glory . . . A memorable and impressive debut’—Sunday Times

‘Throughout, it reveals Tejpal’s eye for characterisation and description’—Guardian

‘The passion in the novel is deeply organic to the characters and the narrative. As an attempt to compel readers to look at desire without the crippling impulse of shame and hypocrisy, it works beautifully’—Independent