Shakchunni: a demon from Bengali lore, one who possesses married women. The Great Famine scours Bengal. Armies of the starving walk the lands, fighting for scraps of food. Yet none of that pain seems to touch the Banerjees, the lords of Shyamlapur. They rule their fiefdom in all the pomp and pageantry of the Raj at its height. When Narayanpratap Banerjee, the eldest son of the ruler of Shyamlapur, abandons his education in London and returns home, his heart broken by an Englishwoman, he is married off to a poor girl from a distant village, the ethereally beautiful Soudamini.