Barefoot and wearing a langot, a little boy scurries across the baked red earth, his eyes and mind fixed firmly on the path ahead. Then the camera zooms out to give us an ominous view: “In the distance, silhouetted by the now bright sun, stand some large, menacing, sharp-edged machines.” It’s in these visual descriptions, with the feel of a screenplay, almost, that Devashish Makhija’s Oonga shows itself to be The Book of the Film. The young adult novel is an adaptation of Makhija’s 2013 film of the same name, which never got a commercial release. (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. Subscribe here.)