Bougainvillea House — Kalpana Swaminathan

'Memory is striped grey and black. It stalks, patient as a cat, lean and randy...A wild, harsh, solitary thing.' Clarice Aranxa has come to Bougainvillea House to die. But on her very first morning there, she is pitched back into the turbulent, secret life that she has striven hard to forget for thirty-six years. As Clarice grows weaker from the ravages of motor neuron disease - barely able to walk or even sit up in bed - her violent past is mirrored in fresh tragedies. She retreats into silence, and her doctor, Liaqat Ali Khan, is forced to take a bold step to help her unburden her mind. What is Liaqat to make of Clarice's story? Is it truth or morbid fantasy? What can explain the recurrent motif of betrayal and sudden death? And what can explain Liaqat's own dread? In rich, hypnotic prose, Kalpana Swaminathan has probed the dark spaces of the human mind to construct a chilling and brilliantly paced psychological drama.