The Patient In Bed Number 12

A hate video goes viral. A dying father sets out in search of the living. A
daughter risks all to follow her head and heart.
The Patient in Bed Number 12 is a remarkable novel framed as a
confession from parent to child, from child to parent. In this profoundly
moving exchange, secrets long buried tumble out, mysterious and
dreamlike: a grieving mother finds solace in a newspaper photograph; a
ghost comes to life in an abandoned fridge; children fill empty jars with
the night’s darkness; a young couple plan how to seek permission for
their love; and three men with a phone camera turn a family’s world
upside down.
Just as one breath holds in its end the beginning of another, each story’s
close becomes the opening for the next—linking fragile strands of
individual lives into a tapestry of hope and heartbreak. From Raj Kamal
Jha, India’s ‘novelist of the newsroom,’ comes a searing investigation of
the pulse of today’s India: a billion-plus young people, restless and
ambitious, trying to shed the burdens of their past—and yet haunted by
ghosts of mistrust and hate