The Lovers is about a man in\n search of a love story. This man, our narrator, is Kailash?a new immigrant,\n eager to shine. His friends teasingly call him Kalashnikov and sometimes\n AK-47, even AK. In his account of his years at a university in New York, AK takes\n us through the bittersweet arc of youth and love. There is discovery and\n disappointment. There are the brilliant women, Jennifer and Nina and Cai Yan.\n There is the political texture of campus life and the charismatic professor\n overseeing these young men and women, Ehsaan Ali (modelled on the real-life\n Eqbal Ahmad). Manifest in AK?s first years and first loves is the wild\n enthusiasm of youth, its idealism, chaotic desires and confusions.A decidedly\n modern novel that melds story and reportage, anecdote and annotation, picture\n and text, fragment and essay, The Lovers reminds us of the works of John\n Berger and Teju Cole. Funny, meditative and shot through with waves of\n longing, the book explores feelings of discomfort about cultural\n misunderstandings and the lack of clarity between men and women. At heart\n though, it is an investigation of love??love despite, or in spite of; love\n beyond and across dividing lines?.