No God in Sight — Altaf Tyrewala

Fast -- paced and innovative, No God in Sight captures the seething multiplicity of Bombay through the first -- person accounts of an abortionist, a convert, a pregnant refugee, a gangster in hiding, a butcher, and an apathetic CEO, among others.

As the reader is hurtled from monologue to short story to anecdote, disparate lives collide in tantalizing ways. A family flees religious persecution in their village to take refuge in an urban slum; women walk the tightrope of free will and dormant violence; a father and son grant each other the relief of estrangement; and young men and women struggle to comprehend the consequences of sexual attraction.