Tarun Tejpal is a publisher, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Tehelka, an award-winning, campaigning magazine that has exposed the corruption in India’s defence industry, leading to the resignation of the defence minister. He is, in other words, a man at the centre of things in one of the most baffling and dynamic countries in the world.

He is also a novelist. The Story of My Assassins follows the internationally acclaimed The Alchemy of Desire. These days it seems almost impossible to be an Indian novelist without simultaneously aspiring to be the Indian novelist and, with this book, Tejpal lays a serious claim to the title. It