Navi is twenty years old, a virgin, and certain the world has failed him. Raised on internet masculinity and borrowed bravado, he has spent his adolescence performing a version of himself built entirely on lies.

When Mira — sharp-eyed, mysterious, and possessed of an ancient amulet — offers him the chance to travel through time, Navi jumps at it. She can send him to the eras men like him romanticise. The periods they believe were simpler, fairer, better. Go, she tells him. See for yourself.

What follows is a journey across four historical worlds that dismantles every myth Navi has been sold. In medieval India, 1983 New York, 1970s Goa, and 1960s Kenya, he meets women whose lives shatter his assumptions about the past — and force him to confront the truth about himself.

A long, ridiculous, sometimes beautiful journey back to someone worth being.

Perfect for readers of Normal People, A Little Life, and The Kite Runner.