Who would you go back for?

Lestari Aris is a woman on the edge. Her tattoo studio on Karangahape Road is hammered by burglaries; the hangers-on in her life, from a teenage runaway to a married cop, are bonded to her for reasons she can't fathom. And years after Lestari's father disappeared, her Indonesian mother is still lost in a self-medicated blur.

When a murder in Symonds Street Cemetery whirls Lestari into the orbit of an unpredictable drug, she uncovers a decades-long covert clinical study targeting rough sleepers and others on the fringes – and its dark connections with her own life and history. Everything is connected: the past is circling. How far will Lestari go to save someone she loves?

Set in a vivid, grimy inner-city Auckland, Isobar Precinct is an audacious novel that explores perceptions of time and progress, and asks whether the past ever disappears. It also marks Angelique Kasmara as a writer to watch.