Cardiff in the 1980's is a place where maths can get you noticed. Rumis Vasi is the town's 'maths prodigy': untangling numbers and Rubik's Cubes protects her from the harsh vagaries of the playground and gives a pattern to her world. But after years of her father's determined tutoring, Rumi finds that numbers are beginning to lose their innocence. India infuses her with a romantic sense of belonging and, as she grows older, and desire becomes a dirty word in the Vasi household, the idea of love is opened up to painful examination.

In a voice that is by turns very funny and fiercely tender, Nikita Lalwani brings us a captivating story of high aspirations and deep longing, and of the sometime loneliness of childhood.

Winner of Desmond Elliott Prize 2008
Commended for Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2007
Shortlisted for Whitbread Book of the Year Award First Novel Category 2007
Shortlisted for Glen Dimplex New Writers Awards: Fiction 2007
Shortlisted for Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2007.