What makes us human?

Twelve people accompany an anthropologist to a deserted island, cutting off all relations with the outside world. There, an experiment begins. They are not to use any known languages and must begin anew – to explore and find out if they can achieve in twenty-five years what humanity has achieved over generations.

Twenty-five years later, only three of the thirteen have survived. As these three survivors recount their tale, what emerges is a story of humanity returned to its primitive roots, bereft of attachment, and not nearly as utopian as was expected.

Award-winning writer T. D. Ramakrishnan’s debut novel, translated for the first time to English, explores through a powerfully imaginative conceit the meaning of relationships, attachments, love, hate and anger. Above all, it seeks to answer the question: what does it mean to be human?