'Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard. I am a lover of America...' So speaks the mysterious stranger at a Lahore cafe. In this title, this speaker of immaculate English tells you his story, of how he embraced the Western dream - and a Western woman - and how both betrayed him.

Daru, a young Pakistani banker, loses his job and begins a downward spiral into drug dealing and an affair with Mumtaz, the wife of his childhood friend and rival. Broken and desperate, he becomes involved in a heist that leaves him on trial for murder.

This is the tale of a man's journey from impoverished rural boy to corporate tycoon. It follows its nameless hero to the sprawling metropolis where he begins to amass an empire built on the most fluid and increasingly scarce of goods: water. Yet his heart remains set on something else, on the pretty girl whose star rises alongside his, their paths crossing and re-crossing in a love affair sparked and snuffed out again by the forces that careen their fates along. The hero of the story could be any one of us, hungry for a different life.

Presents a compelling case for recognizing our common humanity while relishing our diversity - both as readers and citizens; for resisting the artificial mono-identities of religion or nationality or race; and for always judging a country or nation by how it treats its minorities, as 'Each individual human being is, after all, a minority of one'.