It’s the last night of February 2002. A helpless nation watches as the city of Ahmedabad in India is rocked by religious violence. Before sunrise the next day, more than a hundred — and in a matter of weeks, a thousand — Muslim men, women and children will be killed, most of them burnt alive. Above the burning city, some of the dead get together and decide to take matters in their own hands.

So begins Fireproof, Raj Kamal Jha’s mesmerizing new novel, in which the murdered whisper from footnotes, use text and pictures, fact and fiction, the absurd and the real to counter the crushing force of denial. At the heart of the novel are narrator Jay (not his real name) and Ithim. A man carrying an unspeakable secret and a baby newly born and severely deformed. Holding out hope of a cure for the baby, a mystery woman, who writes with her fingers on glass, draws both man and child out of their home — and into the city on fire.

In prose breathtaking in its ability to evoke both terror and tenderness and in a form so original it defies description, Raj Kamal Jha has created a work that could serve as a tract for our times. Fireproof is a burningly fierce testimony to the ordinary nature of collective evil, and the extraordinary power of individual conscienc