Named for the revolutionary Trotsky by a missing communist father he never saw, Leon Ali is a Kashmiri born in Britain and brought up by a single mother in Delhi. Keya Raina is a Kashmiri scholar of exile, an insecure immigrant, who collects other people s stories. Marked by the oppressive history of Kashmir, they meet in Berlin, the city of Cold War partitions, and begin a journey of discovery, which reveals to them the story of Shula Farid, the bohemian wife of a staid Bengali diplomat. Through their travels, these two young Kashmiris outside Kashmir find startling truths about themselves during unwitting identities and multiple belongings the residue of shared human emotions. A riveting exploration of mobility and affinity across the borders of nation and faith, Residue provides fascinating glimpses of class-stratified urban India, divided Berlin, and complications of identity in England. It is a remarkable novel about divided lands and fortress continents, lines inked in blood and memory, and the absences they create in people s lives and imaginations.