Fugue States opens with the eulogy at a funeral: a eulogy delivered by Ash, a radio host, upon the death of his father, Brij, a Kashmir-born doctor and would-be writer. Later, while sorting through his father's belongings, Ash comes across a mysterious document: a half-completed and utterly baffling work of fiction set (possibly) in Kashmir. Ash begins to wonder about his Indian heritage and the ancestral home he knows — only through his father's stories — as a place of brutality and stunning natural beauty. And yet he resists going to visit, skeptical of being another Westerner visiting a war-torn homeland; instead, Ash's best friend Matt — a drifter, pot-head, career bartender, massage therapy student and self-described "maker of memories" (in other words, a "fool" in the best sense, in the spirit of Shakespeare and Cervantes and Nabokov's Pnin) — takes it upon himself to go in Ash's place... with strange, unexpected, hilarious and excruciating results. (From Knopf Canada)