Body And Blood: Stories On Breaking The Ten Commandments

What would happen if one did steal, commit adultery, covet ones neighbours goods, even murderand break all the rules we were taught to live by?

Each story in this firstofitskind collection takes you into a realm where people are prompted by love, desire, jealousy, hatred and, at times, a strange compassion, to throw out the old, conventional rules, and make their own.

The title story, Body and Blood, is a macabre revelation of how far one can go when one loves someone before all others, even God; in Honour.

Or Not, a young girl abused by her father since the age of thirteen finds a shockingly unexpected way of honouring him when he dies.

In a lighter vein, the protagonist in Sunday Snow Job asserts that working girls have to work, even on the Holy Sabbath, while Gomes in Heart of Gold finds it is possible to covet your neighbours wife and get rich too.

Wakulla raises the question: can stealing be an act of compassion, and not a sin; while Fall shows how one can make love to ones best friends wife without actually committing adultery.

And coveting your neighbours goods is fineas long as they are the right ones, as Elegy in a Churchyard, the tenth story in this riveting collection, teaches us.

Urmilla Deshpande writes with panache and style to make this a collection of noir and black humour at its best, by turns erotic, tongueincheek and shocking.