Manik Mudigonda was born into (and subsequently rejected from) a highly scrupulous Brahmin family in India's holiest city, Benares. Now, in the heady days leading up to World War I, he is a lonely colonial solicitor in Mombasa, Kenya's most multicultural, metropolitan city. He possesses numerous physical deformities, including severe, patchy depigmentation all over his body, one bright red eye, a wiry shock of waist-length white hair, and hundreds of smallpox scars. He's a complete outsider with limited coping mechanisms, and he finds comfort in primarily destructive ways-alcoholism, bulimia,...

Manik Mudigonda was born into (and subsequently rejected from) a highly scrupulous Brahmin family in India's holiest city, Benares. Now, in the heady days leading up to World War I, he is a lonely colonial solicitor in Mombasa, Kenya's most multicultural, metropolitan city. He possesses numerous physical deformities, including severe, patchy depigmentation all over his body, one bright red eye, a wiry shock of waist-length white hair, and hundreds of smallpox scars. He's a complete outsider with limited coping mechanisms, and he finds comfort in primarily destructive ways-alcoholism, bulimia,...