Various conceptions of form have, across cultures, embodied the liberations of failing: synecdoche; the image; metaphor?all these arise from a preferred inability to represent fully. The essays in this collection by novelists, academics and film-makers, including Sunetra Gupta, Sumana Roy, Michel Chaouli and Anurag Kashyap, ask readers to account for the attractions specific to failing; for why, and how, it awakens our desire; why it is taboo today in a way quite different from the era before the market; and to reassess this history.