The summer before he turned forty, he lived in New Haven, on its High Street, in an old apartment building. Its exposed brickwork, when he saw it the first time, reminded him of the gas chimneys in Dachau. In the spring of that year, he had been offered a fellowship at Yale. When he received the email in Delhi, he realised that there was a chance to live in solitude after a long, long time; that, at last, he could find space to think without disruption. The apartment was close to the repertory theatre. It was on the sixth floor...