Surface — Siddhartha Deb

Amrit is a reporter for the Sentinel, dispatched to 'the region' on the vaguest of assignments. Despite his initial reluctance, he is hopeful he may uncover enough of interest and intrigue to make the front page. And he has the perfect place to start: a photograph he's uncovered of a young woman, involved in pornography, taken captive by a shadowy insurgent group and paraded before the press as a lesson to others like her. 'Illusion and delusion, fronts and set-ups are riffs that run through this novel and Amrit's journey into the region turns out to be a metaphor for a remarkable voyage of self-discovery and self-realisation' Observer 'Deb has created his own impressively autonomous world . . . As the title suggests, nothing is as it seems in this book, and Deb brings the shadowy, almost dream-like 'region' to vivid life with specific and well-chosen physical details in this confidently imagined, cleverly constructed and finely written novel' Sunday Times