From the rose gardens of Shiraz to the snowpowdered hillside above Kabul; from the water and stone mirages of St Petersburg to gritty Mumbai, the essays in the collections combine travel and literature using a charming mix of the personal impression and incisive literary criticism.Whether writing from the cocoon of a booklined study, digging into forgotten secondhand bookshops, trekking the Himalayan hills or searching out farflung literary sites around the globe,Sarna never veers far from the essential focus of these columns, written over seven years for the Literary Review of The Hindu, they combine: the love of books and the men who write them.