Under the Night Jasmine by Manav Kaul

How complex are relationships between men and women? How corrupt is a man's thinking towards the women he interacts with? And even though a woman gives birth to a man, how little a man truly understands her. When the pandemic strikes and lockdown is imposed, the always-travelling Rohit is forced to stop, introspect, and dwell on his relationships thus far - with his mother, his teacher, his lovers - and how they continue to shape his thoughts and relationships in the present. Back in the day, the first stirrings of sexual attraction for his teacher and her lover brought with them the shame of desire. Years later, his relationships with a lost girlfriend and with his friend Dushyant lead to guilt and remorse. What could he have done differently? What kind of a shameless person was he, using people to fulfil himself? Fluctuating between poetry and prose, and questioning even its own method of writing, Under the Night Jasmine by Manav Kaul, translated from the Hindi by Vaibhav Sharma, is a layered, many-splendoured, coming-of-age novel - a micro look at a man's world that both provokes and fascinates. Ideal for readers who enjoy introspective, literary fiction with an unconventional structure.