New Delhi, Sept. 6 -- The Canadian writer M.G. Vassanji's latest novel (his 11th), The Apparition, plunges the reader head-first into the Delhi Sultanate in the early 14th century, the twilight days of Alauddin Khilji's reign. It is a kingdom beset with war, famine and religious ultra-orthodoxy, not to mention the machinations of the Sultan's deceitful, power-hungry vizier Malik Kafur.

Amir Hassan al-Shirazi, the narrator-protagonist is a Sufi poet, historian and intellectual who the Sultan himself has tasked with chronicling the history of his regime. In one scene, Hassan's friend Nazar Ben Hakim, a dealer in rare books, manuscripts and antiquities, is arrested by Khilji's clerics on suspicion of being a Baatini-a word used to describe ...