This novel is anchored in an imagined India that has been left partly feudal and partly republican by the departing British. We are in oil-rich Sheerpur, an independent princely state in Rajasthan, somewhere along Pakistan’s border. Bindy, a young woman raised in an orphanage in the south, arrives to take up employment as the personal assistant to the feisty, foul-mouthed and scheming Princess Riddhima.