By Salman Rushdie
Jonathan Cape £20
Aged nine, Pampa Kampana watches her mother, and all the women of the tiny province where she was born, build a huge bonfire and walk ‘unflinchingly’ into the flames.
The reason is ostensibly a humiliating military defeat in a battle not significant enough to have a name. Afterwards, the young girl is possessed by the spirit of the goddess Pampa, the local name of Parvati, lover of Shiva. That is: