The Garden Of Earthly Delights

Hironmoy Bose lives with his girlfriend, runs a telephone-booth business, and has a weakness for fire. He is unexpectedly provided with an opportunity to abandon his life of love and duty and return to the life he knows best – that with the denizens of 72 Banamali Nashkar Lane, the chummery across the road. “I was once again a free man, unfettered in the company of men who understood the value of happily being alone together.” As things begin to happen, Hiren slowly realizes that all is not what it appears to be. ‘Why me?’, is a query that Manik Basu, renowned novelist, asks himself in faraway Prague as he is forced to write in confinement in order to fulfil his contractual obligations. ‘He was just marking time before someone unlocked the door, unleashed normalcy, and told him to write as a free man.’As the words begin to flow, Basu realizes that all is not what it appears to be. Arson and literature meet in The Garden of Earthly Delights, a novel that is as much about desire, captivity and destruction as it is about the wisdom of the adage: Trust no one.