Zafar, the good-looking, gracious scion of erstwhile nobility, has an affair with a married woman who declines to leave her aging husband for him, and so, respecting her decision, he marries and falls in love with the highborn and beautiful Zeba, to whom, from that day on, he is forever faithful and devoted. But his passage towards the future, towards fulfillment, is not as simple as he anticipated; along the way he encounters the trial of love and death, kinship and societal change... Set in the Hyderabad of the 1950s and 1960s, this is a story of the lives and loves of an India aristocracy told variously through a host of narrative voices. An elegant and evocative novel, the prose is resplendent in its portrayal of Indian nobility, quiet in its depiction of their loves.

Aminuddin Khan was born in Hyderabad in 1932, a descendant of the old aristocracy of the former princely state. His family's connection with the Asaf Jahi dynasty goes back to 1724. He is an industrial psychologist, a management consultant and the administrator of the Nizam's private estate. He is also engaged in setting up the archives of the Asaf Jahi dynasty in Chowmahala Palace, Hyderabad. A novelist in his spare time, he is the author of A Way Through the Woods,