Paul Theroux returns to India with a stylish and gripping novel of crime and obsession in Calcutta.

In A Dead Hand, Paul Theroux brings to dramatic life a dark and twisted narrative of obsession and need. When Jerry Delfont, a travel writer with writer’s block, receives a letter from a captivating and seductive American philanthropist with news of a scandal involving an Indian friend of her son’s, he is sufficiently intrigued to pursue the story. Who is the boy found on the floor of a cheap hotel room, how and why did he die — what is it that pulls Delfont into this story, and will he ever find the truth about what happened?


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"A fearless artist, Theroux is prepared to think about most things and travel to places most of us leave unexamined and unexplored."
— Globe and Mail

"Theroux delivers pungent atmosphere, capturing the humid stench and labyrinthine decay of pre-monsoon Calcutta...."
— The Independent (U.K.)


From the Hardcover edition.

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Paul Theroux, an internationally renowned travel writer, is also the author of more than two dozen highly acclaimed novels and other non­fiction. He divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian Islands.


From the Hardcover edition.

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