"Ramchandra is a math teacher earning a low wage and living in a small apartment in Kathmandu with his wife and two children. Moonlighting as a tutor, he engages in an illicit affair with one of his tutees, Malati, a beautiful, impoverished young woman who is also a new mother. She provides for him what his wife, who comes from a privileged background, does not: desire, mystery, and the beauty of a simpler life.

Not surprisingly, the affair soon upends Ramchandra's family, and he learns that he knows far less about his wife - and about himself than he thought." "Complicating matters is Kathmandu itself, a small city bursting with the conflicts of modernization, a static government, and a changing population. Just as Kathmandu must contain its growing needs, so must Ramchandra learn to accommodate both tradition and his very modern desires."--BOOK JACKET.