num_pages: 336
description: Finalist for the 2021 Epigram Books Fiction PrizeBeneath the façade of a land golden with opportunities dwell two destitutes shipped to Singapore in the late 1800s. Oseki, an ingenue forced into servitude as a karayuki, grapples with betrayal by her own father and transforms into a monster she can’t recognise. Gobind, a deaf convict from India, serves his sentence as a punkhawala to a tiger-hunting British master obsessed with killing Rimau Satan, the man-eating tiger; while on a hunt, his butchered memories lurk from the darkness, aching to pounce. When their paths intertwine, they face their inner demons to find humanity and their way back home.
language: English
title: The Punkhawala and the Prostitute
publisher: Epigram Books