Through Arjun's struggle, the author explores caste and class discrimination that continues to plague society in contemporary India. The story unfolds against the backdrop of the violence of the Naxal movement of the 1960s and '70s that wiped out an entire generation of Bengal's youth. Anita Agnihotri sensitively handles a difficult subject and interweaves these two struggles: the one of the idol maker and the other of the families of the young Naxalite revolutionaries whom the state destroyed.

A member of the Indian administrative service, she ahs written over 25 books.Poetry, short stories, novels, critical essays, and children books. Her work has been translated into all major Indian languages, asw well as German and Swedish.