Acknowledgements:A whole world of readers midwifed this book. I couldn’t have finished it without my earliest readers: Jan Michaels, Meena Rishi and the wonderful people in my Amsterdam Fiction critique group (Maria Minaya, David Lee, Laura Martz, Ute Klehe, Tim Rease, Dina Nayeri) and the Shanghai Scribblers (Tan Zheng, Kong Peoy Leng, Trista Baldwin, Paul Kurowski, Susie Gordon, Lenora Chu, Jacqueline van der Puye, Francis Yap). My gratitude also to my critique group in Chicago: (Patricia Grace King, Paulette Livers, Rebecca Keller, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Karri Offstein Rosenthal, Angela Pneuman) as well as Dr Serena Wadhwa for some psychological insights. In India, Divya Dubey and Mita Kapur’s team gave me invaluable feedback, as did Alpona Dey in the Netherlands.
My gratitude to Nicola B
