Book excerpt: This poetic narrative discusses the creative life of a 9th century Indian stonecarver who is drafted at an early age to spend his entire life working on the thousands of statues that fill the niches of an Indonesian temple. Exploring the muse–artist relationship as few works of fiction have done, this novel is an intensely political work—a parable that pits the blind cruelty of a feudal ruler against the creative expression of a single slave.