Fireproof

February 2002. A helpless nation watches as the city of Ahmedabad in India is rocked by religious violence. In the aftermath and before the sun rises, more than 100 Muslim men, women, and children are killed, most burned alive. Above the smoke and flames, the dead begin to intervene. So begins 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. A work of fiction that challenges the way we look at the most twisted events of our times and 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.