From the author of the blue bedspread, a wonderful new novel about family, fantasy and love amir, mala and their daughter are normal people amir goes to his office; mala reads the newspaper; their young daughter plays alone but jha has not chosen to tell a tale of everyday life in calcutta instead he looks inwards at the elaborate stories that people tells themselves in the looking-glass world of the novel, nothing is quite what it seems and yet, at the same time, it is all very familiar if you are afraid of heights is about the private journeys that people go on in their minds; about imaginations fuelled by the images and narratives of a city