This novel is a work of fiction, invented and imagined. A resemblance of the characters to people living or dead, and to situations from history, if it happens, will be largely a function of a synchronicity between the imagination of the writer and the life of the reader. I would acknowledge there is a boy I did not know, who did set himself on fire in my hometown when I was too young to remember fully, and the faint memory of which haunted me until I wrote this. His story is inviolate, and not here.