Fireproof

February 2002. A helpless nation watches as the city of Ahmedabad in India is rocked by religious violence. Before sunrise the next day, more than a hundred Muslim men, women and children will be killed, most of them burnt alive. Above the smoke and flames, the dead decide to intervene. So begins Fireproof , Raj Kamal Jha's mesmerizing new novel, in which the murdered whisper from footnotes and photographs. At the heart of the novel is its narrator Jay ' a man who carries with him an unspeakable secret and a newborn baby ' and a mystery woman, who writes with her fingers on glass, drawing man and child out of their home and on a journey across the burning city. From the author of The Blue Bedspread and If You Are Afraid of Heights , comes a work of fiction that challenges the way we look at the most twisted events of our times. Evoking both terror and tenderness, Fireproof is a compelling testimony to the ordinary nature of collective evil, and to the extraordinary power of individual conscience.