Riot

Book excerpt: Who Killed Twenty-Four-Year-Old Priscilla Hart? And Why Would Anyone Want To Murder This Idealistic American Student Who Had Come To India To Volunteer In A Women S Health Programme? Had Her Work Made A Killer Out Of An Enraged Husband? Or Was Her Death The Result Of A Xenophobic Attack? Was She Involved In An Indiscriminate Love Affair That Had Spun Out Of Control? Or Was She Simply The Innocent Victim Of A Riot That Had Exploded In That Fateful Year Of 1987 Between Hindus And Muslims? Shashi Tharoor Experiments Brilliantly With Narrative Form, Chronicling The Mystery Of Priscilla Hart S Death Through The Often Contradictory Accounts Of A Dozen Or More Characters. Intellectually Provocative And Emotionally Charged, Riot Is A Novel About The Ownership Of History, About Love, Hate, Cultural Collision, Religious Fanaticism And The Impossibility Of Knowing The Truth.