Sonia Shah

Sonia Shah is the novel’s central consciousness, a young Indian woman whose life unfolds across family homes in India and precarious spaces abroad. She is observant and imaginative, and she repeatedly tries to turn experience into narrative, whether through private reflection, remembered stories, or her later struggle to write about what has happened to her. Her identity forms under the competing pressures of family duty and personal desire: she belongs to a household shaped by Dadaji’s authority and Ba’s guardedness, yet she longs for a life in which affection is not measured, negotiated, or withheld as leverage. Sonia’s relationships expose how intimacy can become another form of isolation. With Ilan de Toorjen Foss, she enters a romance that offers glamour, access, and artistic validation, but it also demands submission, and the imbalance of age, fame, and mobility leaves her unsure where love ends...