The set-up of Neil Bissoondath’s latest novel might sound a tad familiar. Take a stranger and drop him down in a strange place. See what happens. See how he changes. But take heart! Even the simplest premise expands in the hands of a writer who has grown to be as masterful as Bissoondath has.

This particular strange place, a village called Omeara, is not a delightful locale that would welcome an outsider. The village sits in a country that is never named but bears a striking resemblance to Sri Lanka — the cricket scene, a proximity to India, a green-brown-and-red flag, a rainy season, and a sharply divided populace. There are a few muffled pops of gunfire in the distance. There is a vague menacing military presence, rebels in the hills, and a populace of locals who project the kind of friendliness that only serves to mask secrets underneath.

Arun is the stranger of the novel. A young man escaping from a life of privilege among the ruling classes of the northern part of the country, he’s come down south to teach the people who are disdainfully referred to as “2 percenters.” It’s not a good fit. Arun moves uneasily through the village on a prosthetic leg that doesn’t match his dark skin. He inherits a schoolhouse with a meagre attendance; the few students who show up are the rejects who can’t work in the fields.

The cast that assembles around Arun in Omeara seems capable of darker secrets. On the train ride, he meets Seth, the assistant to a general who is about to become a new father. He is welcomed to the village by the town butcher, who spends his evenings seeking escape in the romantic fiction his daughter, Anjani, reads him. Anjani’s life is mysterious but never romantic. She is lithe, almost beautiful, but “her attractive leanness was a step away from cadaverous.” Worse still, her mother has not spoken since the mysterious disappearance of her son.

Beyond all this, lurking on the outskirts of the town are the Boys, a mysterious group of rebels who skirmish with the local military attachment. As their attacks become more effective, their notoriety grows.

All is not well, and Bissoondath, in top form, draws out these hints of impending danger. He has an obvious love for this setting, vigorously filling in the details of the village. The dusty heat of the summer months gives way to the “glutinous paste” of the roads during the rainy season. Once he’s immersed us in Omeara’s heat and smells so completely, Bissoondath brings in the threats, the terror, and the mystery with a series of sharp and well-rendered jolts to the plotline.

Arun tries to effect change on Omeara, but it is Omeara that ultimately works on him, forcing him to question his present beliefs, his views on his upbringing, and the secrets his own privileged family holds. He is altruistic and has forgone his share of a wealthy inheritance to do something with his life. But in Omeara, surrounded by the poverty and threat of violence, optimism has a way of snuffing itself out.

Bissoondath might have made this into the story of a young man’s awakening, his acceptance into a rural community, and his challenges teaching at a schoolhouse full of children who put 5 after 3. Again and again he heads down a more complicated, more fulfilling, and darker route. Bombs keep going off. The military has a habit of gathering the town together to watch as the latest haul of dead insurgents are dumped into an open grave. Who is complicit with the Boys? Who is helping to make these bombs?

Bissoondath answers these questions at a masterful pace. He knows how and when to release information. He even pays tribute to past masters, giving Arun a copy of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to leaf through.

Because Bissoondath has created a community that hums with authenticity, he is able to pile on elements of intrigue. Because he understands the steady drip of suspense, the novel is sustained to the ending. Bissoondath, through his fine eye for detail, weaves important issues into the background while examining the motives that drive people to insurgency.

This finely wrought, detailed novel cannot, obviously, provide answers, but Bissoondath sets out many of the questions that fiction should be exploring in these odd, explosive times. What makes an insurgent? Why do the oppressed go to such extraordinary lengths?

Not that there are easy answers to any of those questions. The words of the butcher’s daughter, Anjani, sum it up best: “There’s no beginning,” she says. “There’s no end. Just a kind of endless middle.”