Under a demented sky

A young mother crazed by the imminent death of her infant son bitten by a cobra launches into a desperate quest for a snake doctor, an antidote and eventually a way to resurrect her child. This 'slave-wife' of a nabob faces adverse elements, wild men and beasts and bizarre recluses and mystics in and out of the wild Indian jungle in the days of the Buddha. Adventure story, paean to motherhood, Buddhist allegory, this breathless tale of love, death, and gender and social discrimination is transmogrified by the stylish pyrotechnics and caustic irreverence of the author of The White Shadow and Venom into yet another world-class masterpiece.