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In a thinly fictionalised Pakistan, Rani Shah, a charismatic female prime minister, returns from exile and is assassinated. Her fiercely devoted aide Nazo Khan, a woman of humble origins who rose by attaching herself to Rani, is put on trial for the killing. The novel unfolds through courtroom proceedings and Nazo's own testimony, leaving open whether she is guilty, complicit, or simply the most convenient defendant.
When a powerful figure is killed amid competing interests, a state is served by a verdict that closes the case without implicating anyone who matters. The most expendable person close to the victim, low in status, lacking patrons and with visible access, becomes the ideal defendant. The trial's function shifts from finding the truth to producing a culprit who absorbs blame, so that no one with real power is named.
An aide who builds her whole identity around a leader gains borrowed status and intimate access but no independent standing. The same closeness that made her indispensable makes her the obvious suspect once the leader is gone. Devotion also blurs into possession and resentment, so the loyal servant's motives become legible to others as betrayal.
Telling a political killing through a defendant's self-justifying testimony and hostile prosecution shows that the 'truth' of an event is whichever account prevails in the institution judging it. The reader, like the court, gets only interested narrators and must weigh motive, class and rhetoric rather than evidence alone. This exposes how official history of an assassination is assembled from competing stories whose selection is itself political.