New Delhi, Sept. 19 -- Geet Chaturvedi's powerful novel, Gomutra (literally, cow urine), translated from the Hindi by Anita Gopalan as Scent of the Nameless (though "stench" rather than "scent" feels better suited to the mood of the text), begins on a note of menace. The unnamed protagonist, a family man who works as a "store coordinator" at a multinational company in Mumbai, wakes up in the dead of the night, reeking of cow urine. No amount of washing or scrubbing with fragrant soaps can get rid of the foul odour. It seeps underneath his skin, stubbornly sticking to his armpits, fills him with self-loathing, and trails him for days on end.

Chaturvedi's narrator may not be as radically transformed as Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of Fran...