Beero lives through a succession of days and events. His father gambles, his mother screams and gets hit by her husband, his sister flirts rather desperately. Beero searches for love and kindness in his strife-torn family. The spare delicacy of Vaid's prose illustrates a child's joy of play in fragile balance with the violence and poverty of his circumstances. Translated by the author 'An extraordinary novel. Its ingredients deceptively simple, its point of view delicately subtle.' Saturday Review 'An extraordinary achievement.' Nissim Ezekiel