Set in the war-torn world of Mughal India and first published in the gathering darkness of the 1930s, the three novels collected in <i>The Root and the Flower</i> are stories of intrigue, murder, and romance; of Tantric abandonment and Buddhist renunciation; of emotional delirium and spiritual adventure. This enthralling visionary trilogy is, as Penelope Fitzgerald remarks in her introduction, a &quot;strange masterpiece,&quot; and one of the unsung glories of modern literature.