Telegraphy

Growing up in Pakistan, Annie experiences the death of her mother, goes to college in Karachi, falls in love with a singer in a band, marries the wrong man, and all her life has visions and illnesses no doctor can explain. She believes that external events can cause disruptions in the body, and these 'can radiate from person to person, forward and sideways as generations appear and migrate'. Signals are received from across time and space. Passages interwoven with Annie's narrative include Vesalius stealing the corpse of a hanged man, a visit to the house of the 17th-century Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch, correspondence between far-flung friends in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, a family's centuries-long dispersal following an earthquake in Kibyra in 23 ce, and a man stepping onto a landmine in contemporary Waziristan.