An adolescent growing into a young man, preoccupied head to toe — and all parts between — with sex, searching for that elusive romantic love and the American dream against the backdrop of a sexually repressed society of small-town India in the 1960s.

The Oxford University setting of Naomi Alderman’s novel is familiar, as is the coming of age narrative built around lessons on life, on love and morals, on relations, religious faith, betrayal and pain. Yet, there is something about the way Alderman writes, her use of words in an easy yet evocative, mind-flaring way that compels one to read on.