In 1969, in the Kerala town of Ayemenem, Estha and Rahel, twins of seven, live with their divorced mother Ammu in a quarrelling Syrian Christian family that runs a pickle factory. The visit of their English cousin Sophie Mol and Ammu's forbidden love for Velutha, an Untouchable carpenter, set off a catastrophe that the novel keeps circling back to from 1993, when the grown twins meet again.