The novel is set against the backdrop of historical events like the Swadeshi movement, Second World War, Partition of India and Communal riots of 1963-64 in Dhaka and Calcutta.

Split into two parts ('Going Away' and 'Coming Home'), the novel follows the life of a young boy growing up in Calcutta, who is educated in Delhi and then follows with the experiences he has in London.

Tha'mma thinks that Tridib is the type of person who seems 'determined to waste his life in idle self-indulgence', one who refuses to use his family connections to establish a career.

A mirror image essentially deals with illusionary space and is evident in the overlapping memories and perspectives of the Novel's main characters.

Names of unknown places form the litany of the narrator's childhood through lore brought back by the foreign service branch of the family but also through twice-removed reports.

The travels in the Novel do not signify any dislocation as time and space are dimensions of an individual's desire in which real and imaginary events or places co-exist harmoniously.

The spatial imagination and the passion for entering other lives that the narrator imbibes from Tridib enables him to be mimetically situated in a specific cultural milieu.

The transparency and undescribed nature of the narrator lets various events, people and places luminously enter his story and find new configurations there.

Maps in this Novel are not confined to an atlas but also appear in floor plans drawn by children playing Houses which provide clues to the past and future reality.

The stories made up by Tridib regarding the Prices and by Ila regarding Nick acted as clues for the narrator's imagination and later turned out to be real people.