Who killed twenty four year old Priscilla Hart? and why would anyone want to murder this idealistic American student who had come to India to volunteer in a women's health programme? Was she the innocent victim of a riot between Hindus and Muslims? Shashi Tharoor experiments brilliantly with narrative form, chronicling the mystery of Priscilla Hart's death through the often contradictory accounts of a dozen or more characters. Intellectually provocative and emotionally charged, Riot is a novel about the ownership of history, about love, hate, cultural commission, religious fanaticism and the impossibility of knowing the truth.