D'Souza's last novel, "Whiteman" broke through my usually-impenetrable cynicism with its irresistible mix of heart, humor, sex and world affairs. In it, D'Souza used his own experience as a Peace Corps volunteer to create a fictional story about a young American in Africa that seemed both ironically wise and believable sweet. D'Souza keeps all that in his new novel, "The Konkans", and this time he brings another aspect of his personal knowledge to his fiction: The title characters are immigrants from the formerly Portuguese-colonized part of India that begat D'Souza's own father. Again, he paints characters as fallible, multi-faceted, and understandable. Again he makes you understand the world a little bit better and believe in the ultimate universality of the human experience. But unlike "Whiteman", this novel has no coming civil war to build dramatic tension. Instead, "The Konkans" has only the unfolding of a family's destiny as a climax. In some ways, it's a quieter novel, but just as affecting and perhaps more complicated. I love this writer. I have print reviews upcoming in both Washington City Paper and the Star Tribune.