A highly intelligent girl becomes entranced by the sounds that birds make. In time, this develops into a fascination – an obsession even – with avian communication; as an accomplished neuroscientist, she devotes her life to attempting to unlock the mystery of bird song. What celebrated novelist Neel Mukherjee explores here is the extent to which communication systems can exert a pull on the human psyche – as well as the costs and dangers that may await the individual who cedes to that pull. Mukherjee’s gripping and poignant tale is accompanied by finely-detailed paintings by Chinese artist Lu Chao in which the relation between earth and air, weight and weightlessness, is constantly in question.

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