Excerpt from The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Across the world, the scale of this killing is even greater than the slaughter that is finally playing itself out in Europe. Here, it hangs like a miasma over the knot of streets near Drummond Road, the quarter of the city called Johri Bazaar where the jewelers have their shops. Now, like the pilot Roy, trailing black smoke over faraway London, plummet down into the middle of all this death, to a large, impressive house cut off from the street noise by high brick walls. Swoop down over the parapet topped with shards of broken glass to a low flat roof, a place where a boy reclines on a charpai, one hand working steadily inside his pajamas.

Pran Nath Razdan is not thinking about death. Quite the opposite. The bazaars may be empty and the corridors of the Thomason hospital clogged with corpses, but none of it has anything to do with him. At the age of fifteen, his world is comfortably circumscribed by the walls of his family house. The only son of the distinguished court pleader Pandit Amar Nath Razdan, he is heir to a fortune of many lakhs of rupees and future owner of the roof he lies on, along with all the courtyards and gardens, the cool high-ceilinged rooms, the servants' quarters, and the innovative European-style toilet block. Farther afield there are other houses, a brace of villages, a boot-blacking business in Lucknow, and a share in a silk-weaving concern. When he glimpses his future, it seems full of promise.

With a sigh he looks down at the tent in his raw-silk pajamas. Full of promise. Money is the least of it. Clearly he is loved by everyone. His father will not hear a word spoken against him. The servants smile as they struggle upstairs with his bath water. When his aunties come to visit, they pinch his cheeks and coo like excited doves. Pran Nath, so beautiful! So pale! Such a perfect Kashmiri!

Pran Nath is undeniably good looking. His hair has a hint of copper to it, which catches in the sunlight and reminds people of the hills. His eyes contain just a touch of green. His cheekbones are high and prominent, and across them, like an expensive drumhead, is stretched a covering of skin that is not brown, or even wheaten colored, but white. Pran Nath's skin is a source of pride to everyone. Its whiteness is not the nasty blue-blotched color of a fresh-off-the-boat Angrezi or the grayish pallor of a dying person, but a perfect milky hue, like that of the marble the craftsmen chip into ornate screens down by the Tajganj. Kashmiris come from the mountains and are always fair, but Pran Nath's color is exceptional. It is proof, cluck the aunties, of the family's superior blood.

Blood is important. As Kashmiri pandits, the Razdans belong to one of the highest and most exclusive castes in all Hindustan. Across the land (as any of them will be happy to remind you) the pandits are known for their intelligence and culture. Princes often call on them to serve as ministers of state, and it is said that a Kashmiri pandit was the first to write down the Vedas. The Razdan family guru can recite their lineage back hundreds of years, back to the time before the valley was overrun by Muslims, and they had to leave to make a new life on the plains. The blood stiffening the bulge in Pran Nath's pajamas is of the highest quality, guaranteed.

Pran Nath is not alone on the roof. The servant girl's choli has ridden up her back, exposing a swath of smooth dark flesh and a ridge of spine. She is sweating, this girl, her skin glistening in the sunshine, her broom held loosely in one hand as she sniffs the air, catching the strong smell of raw onions wafting up from the master's bedchamber. Beneath her many-times-washed cotton sari he can just make out the curve of her buttocks, which was the original stimulus for unlacing his pajamas. Somehow looking is no longer enough. She is not far away. He could grab her, and pull her down on the bolsters. There would be a fuss, of course, but his father could smooth it over. She is only a servant, after all.

Reprinted from The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru by permission of Dutton, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright © 2002 by Hari Kunzru. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.