The Circle of Exile

Iram Haider Kaul is adrift. She has lost her identity, her husband, her children — and yet, even from that hollowed state, she defies borders, lights her lamps against the dark, and steels the crumbling walls inside her. Just as she begins to climb out of the ruins, fate brings Atharva Singh Kaul crashing back into her life. The husband she had abandoned. The Chief Minister who has walked through heaven and hell to reclaim her.

What begins as love clawed back from the impossible, hides a truth she never dreamed of — the son she believed stillborn lives. As Kashmir struggles in the aftermath of upheaval, Iram must step once more into the house she fled. She must rebuild a marriage on the brink, learn to mother an infant who does not recognise her, and work to trust the man who never stopped searching for her. But every bloom she clutches comes shadowed with a price. The lines she crossed have left enemies circling, and vultures now hover over her husband’s chair.

As friends splinter into foes and the same people who crowned him now pull him down, Atharva faces his most dangerous season in power. And Iram, who thought her exile was over, finds herself cast into a new one. From Nagar to Srinagar to Shimla, between Amritsar, Delhi and Rishikesh — is there an end to this circle of exile?

A LOST MOTHER.
A FLAILING FATHER.
A KINGDOM IN PERIL.
WILL COMING HOME COST THEM THEIR HOME?