Winter Evenings

Two men stuck in a small mountain town develop an unspoken friendship, a punctilious bureaucrat becomes briefly reckless at the end of his career, high-class prostitute on vacation reads ''Theove song of J. Alfred Prufrock'' to a man recovering from the end of aong affair, the ghosts of partition return in 1984 to destroy the equilibrium of a tough Sikh matriarch, an ageing widow finds freedom and peace in poetry. In clean, understated prose, Navtej Sarna''s stories take us through theandscapes of Geneva, Shimla, Paris, Moscow, Delhi and Bombay, where everyday people find orose their way inife quietly, almost by accident. Marked by rare sensitivity and compassion, this collection by the acclaimed author of The Exile and We Weren''toversike That is a poignant ode to the human spirit.