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Gregory David Roberts creates an extraordinary sense of place. The heat, traffic, monsoon rain, food, poverty and constant press of humanity make Bombay feel less like the setting of the novel than its most commanding character. When Lin is walking through its streets with Prabaker, living among the residents of the slum or trying to understand the customs of Prabaker’s village, the book has an energy and warmth that explains why it's remained so important to so many readers.

Grotesque escalation can produce horror, but repeated extremity eventually flattens feeling. Once every doorway leads to another atrocity, atrocity becomes expectation. The reader might continue because the solution remains tantalising, yet the emotional response is narrowed to shock.

Set against the cold, deserted landscape of Belport Island, the novel alternates between Kate, whose husband fails to return from a supposed medical conference, and Abby, whose ordinarily dependable husband has begun behaving suspiciously. White creates tension through accumulating inconsistencies rather than constant action: unexplained absences, discarded clothing, carefully maintained lies and the unnerving possibility that neither woman truly knows the man she married.