The novel is set in the fictional State of Afrozabad, which is modeled on the Indian city of Hyderabad, the capital of the state of Telangana and follows the political career of its protagonist Anand a naive idealist who goes on to become the prime minister of the nation.
The novel then breezes through an epilogue that covers the political ascendancy of Indira Gandhi in the 1970s, the Emergency, the Janata interregnum, Indira's second coming and assassination, the rise and death of Sanjay Gandhi and the premiership of Rajiv Gandhi.