Amarapura

Synopsis

The day Sága receives a call from the Spanish consulate in Mumbai informing her that her brother David has been admitted to a hospital in southern India in serious condition, the young woman doesn't hesitate: she gets on a plane and travels immediately to the Asian country. A chain of mistakes turns what should have been an uncomplicated convalescence into an emergency in which David loses both kidneys. Devastated at the prospect of waiting years for a transplant, David discovers how relatively easy it would be to buy a kidney on the black market and becomes obsessed with the idea of not leaving India without trying. Both siblings will then embark on an exciting journey in which they will delve into the ins and outs of the sordid world of organ trafficking in a race against time that will force them to confront their moral principles while they navigate the ever-present Indian spiritual world, which will eventually become the catalyst that helps them understand their desperate decisions.

About this book

Moral and cultural taboos, as well as the absence of alternatives that offer answers to the strict laws regulating transplantation, keep India one of the places where organ trafficking -at the expense of the exploitation of the weak- still persists. Amarapura introduces us, through the initiation journey of its protagonists, into the ethical dilemmas of this trade, under a prism that reviews basic concepts of Hinduism from a Western perspective.

About the author

Ulán Asbeiga (Barcelona, 1979) began his own journey in Reykjavik, in 2005. Iceland was the first stop on a long nomadic voyage that has led him to live in places as disparate as Norway, Nepal, Kyrgyzstan and China, and to wander through India in 2020. Amarapura, his first novel, is the result of the sum of some of his passions, including Nordic culture, architecture, backpacking in Asia and the defense of human rights.