As a teenager from Sri Lanka, Sunny is living the typical life of an expatriate in 1970s Manila-a privileged, carefree existence-until one day when the secret behind his mother's tragic death years earlier is accidentally revealed to him, turning Sunny's world upside down. His life takes a series of unexpected turns-first in England, where he falls in love with the luminous Clara, and later in Sri Lanka, where he returns during a brief lull in the country's brutal ethnic war. Reminiscent of V.S. Naipaul in his nuanced treatment of the melancholy of exile, Gunesekera takes the rea.