The Last Wilderness

An ageing civil servant who lives only in memory, a German woman once taken for a spy, a doctor who visits patients on horseback and a philosopher who has taken to growing apples. A strange cast, against the backdrop of a small town in the Himalayan foothills where the twilight of Empire lingers on. Nirmal Verma’s new novel begins where the stories of its characters ended. Their lives have already been lived, yet something remains to be done before the evening can be allowed to deepen into night. In these lonesome hills, the last secret must be wrung from the wilderness at the heart of man.