Upon the death of her beloved grandmother Ava, Leila discovers a metal box in her ashes. This enchanted heirloom, rooted in a traumatic incident from Ava’s childhood, is guarded by a spirit animal—a white tiger.
To understand the box’s origins, Leila must excavate a decade-old secret of her own. She must also confront the electrifying attraction that exists between her and Raj, her childhood friend.
As Raj’s and Leila’s families become increasingly intertwined and Leila unravels buried truths, the experiences of both her mother and grandmother come to light, nested in her like Matryoshka dolls. Crime and punishment are imagined and experienced through a layer of heightened reality.
Rolling the gothic and fantastical into the quotidian world of this Parsi family, Extinction is a compelling multi-generational novel about survival, illustrating how even a single act of true acknowledgment can have a profoundly healing effect.