'Raeden Richardson’s debut novel has faith in the power of storytelling. It begins in 1976 Bombay with Somnath the shoeshine, a Dalit who dreams of wealth and of sons to pass it down to. But Somnath is a victim of ‘the Emergency’, Indira Gandhi’s totalitarian crackdown on civil liberties. He becomes one of thousands of impoverished Indian citizens sterilised by the government in a drive, they claimed, to curb population growth. Somnath eventually leaves India and settles in Australia, running a chop shop on the outskirts of Melbourne.'