Imperial conflicts in 1600s Sri Lanka, surveillance methods in a near-future American dystopia, experimental composers trying to get their music just right, and much more. There are so many different stories fighting for dominance within this novel, Mark Da Silva’s first, that it feels like it should crumble from the weight of its aspirations, but somehow its unwieldy fullness just makes it that much more powerful. It’s important that, at its core, all of these characters want to understand and shape their own place in the wider world, and so this develops into a deeply affecting portrait of humanity’s relationship to history, of the past and in contemporary life.