Setting—historical and geographical—is the star of Anita Nair’s sixth novel, Idris: Keeper of The Light. Starting in 1659 AD, the novel follows the life of Idris, a Somalian trader travelling to the Malabar coast to attend the Zamorin’s Mamangam festivities. Idris has cut ties with his past and is now an eternal traveller, someone without an address or attachments. Fate brings him face to face with Kandavar, a nine-year-old son born out of a night of passion with a Nair woman on a previous visit to the area, and gently ruffles the calm surface of his detached existence. The boy dreams of becoming a Chaver, one of a group of ill-fated warriors who hurtle towards certain death, sworn to assassinate the Zamorin, bound to a tradition which requires them to avenge some long-forgotten insult to their honour. Intending at first only to deposit the accidentally discovered son safely at his home, Idris slowly finds himself drawn into his life, unable to ignore the call fatherhood makes to his soul.