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Weaving humour with philosophy is comedian Kannan Gill’s debut novel. Detective P Manjunath and his assistant wrestle with an inscrutable mystery, but are pitted against the self-disgraced scientist Dr Krishna. The book blends storytelling with an interrogation of the very nature of existence.

Part-biography, part-history and part-travelogue, it was first published in 2003, a year before Dom Moraes passed away. The authors trace the journey of Thomas Coryate, who travelled across the Arabian desert and the Hindukush to reach Mughal India.