New Delhi, March 22 -- Ashok Ferrey's latest novel, Hot Butter Cuttlefish, is set in the fictional lakeside village of Kalabola in Sri Lanka during the covid-19 years. The protagonist, Malik, is a recently divorced personal trainer, who has relocated to this sleepy outpost, leaving behind his life in the city of Colpetty in the hope of some peace and quiet. But new adventures find him in exile as he becomes inadvertently involved in the lives of the local aristocrat fallen on hard times, 58-year-old Arthur, and his prospective bride, a 23-year-old woman called Chanchala, who has her heart fixed on the estate owned by her betrothed's family.

Marked by Ferrey's vicious sense of humour and the dark, Naipaulian wit that runs through his desc...