The Bureau of Second Chances

After more than thirty years in London, recently widowed Thomas Imbalil returns to India.  He spends his first months in uncluttered isolation in his house overlooking the Arabian Sea, in a small village in Kerala.  But when he agrees to look after his friend's optical store, he meets and befriends Rani, the young assistant.  Before long he discovers that Rani is using the store to run an intriguing side-business.  He agrees to turn a blind eye, but the discovery has made him restless, and reminds him of the lonliness he is feeling and which lies ahead of him.  Rani also reveals herself as a much more complex individual than he had first imagined, and while he had envisaged a quiet reacquaintance with his homeland, Thomas finds himself becoming more and more entangled with the lives of those around him. 

Sheena Kalayil was born in Zambia in 1970 where her parents were teachers seconded from India.  She arrived in the UK aged eighteen and, after graduating, worked all over the world in countries such as Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Tunisia, Equatorial Guinea, Slovenia and Spain, before returning to the UK, to Edinburgh in 2002. She has a doctorate in Linguistics and teaches at the University of Manchester. She lives near Manchester with her husband and two daughters.