New Delhi, July 25 -- Tabish Khair's new novel derives its title from a statement made by its unnamed narrator to a fellow writer at a literary festival on the island of St Martin in France. On a boozy evening, he gets talking to this Anglophone author, much more famous than him and exalted for his liberal views. The conversation soon turns to the ongoing refugee crisis, when the narrator spits out the phrase, "Drown all the refugees," leaving his interlocutor aghast. What he means, though, isn't as flippant as it sounds. So, for the rest of the novel, the narrator makes it his project to unfurl the layers of his statement, to explain his motives as much to the outraged writer as to himself.

Like his last two novels, Night of Happiness (...