Horizons eBook

''His jaw lies here, but he is no more.

He was not his bones turned to ash.

He was not his flesh melted away.''

At the first step of a promising career, Ranchor returns home to face the sobering reality of his father''s demise. A railway employee prevents a young man''s desperate attempt at suicide. Elsewhere, a doctor faces the harrowing prospect of facilitating euthanasia for a friend. In an idyllic city, Keshav''s life is slowly engulfed by a terminal illness, and the spectre of death looms large.

Written in searing prose, these stories by debut author Himanshu Asnani are a rich portrait of lives that mirror countless others. Probing and often edifying, they capture the pathos of life while offering succour to those traversing similar paths - a reminder of fiction''s singular ability to lay bare life''s fundamental questions.