Alfred
Alfred is a character from the story "The Middleman". He is from Iraq and works for a landowner in South America. He becomes a middleman between the landowner's wife and her lover from her youth in conspiring against the landowner.
Renata
Renata is a character from the story "Orbiting. She is a daughter from an Italian family and she finds herself falling more and more in love with her gentlemanly boyfriend from Afghanistan, and finds her family's ignorance ridiculous compared to his mentality.
Maya
Maya is and Indian woman, a failed student living in America who finds herself alienated from both the western world and the traditional world of the country she came from. She is a character from the story "The Tenant".
Jasmine
Jasmine is the character from the same-named story and she is a girl from Trinidad who illegally came to America and discovered the freedom of being whatever she wants to be in this new world.
Mr. Venkatesan
Mr. Venkatesan is a character from the story "Buried Lives". He is an English poetry teacher in India who dreams of living in the sophisticated western world.
Shaila
Shaila is the main character from the story "The Management of Grief". She lost her entire family in a plane crash that caused the tragedy of a lot of Indian families losing their loved ones. She copes differently from others, she is calm and collected and overwhelmed with inner numbness because of the loss.
