“It’s time to stop fighting, and go home.” Those were the words, written by a minor but well-reputed Bengali poet, that finally persuaded Aruna Ahmed Jones to exit her ground-floor Victorian flat wearing only jeans and a t-shirt, carrying nothing more substantial than a handbag, and keep on walking. Leaving behind the handsome Dr. Patrick Jones, her husband of less than a year, Aruna heads to Heathrow, where she boards a plane bound for Singapore, and her old life.

When Aruna left for London, she was fleeing many things: her recently deceased father, the only family she’d ever had; her best friend and lover, Jazz, and the life they’d tried, and failed, to create together; the complicated psychological diagnosis she preferred to forget.

But after years of fleeing the ghosts that continue to haunt her, Aruna is about to discover that running away is really the easy part; it is coming home—making peace with Jazz, with her past, and even with herself—that is hard. With shades of Slumdog Millionaire and The Namesake, Roopa Farooki’s novel is luminous and gripping.