Violence is hard to pin down to a time and place—the ingredients remain the same, lashing feet, a clawfest of blows by axe or knife, the sound of squeals, a sudden outbreak in the green humid tranquility of India’s eastern region that takes innocence by surprise. Anuradha Roy’s Sleeping on Jupiter starts with violence and proceeds to more violence with a girl child at its heart. Nomi, whose name we discover when she appears on a train with coloured braids in her hair and a confusion of beads, catches the eye of a gaggle of women travellers in their sixties who are on their way to the fictional town of Jharmuli by the sea and is immediately established as foreign and confrontational.