Review: The King and the Sage

George Zarkadakis, The King and the Sage (Feline Quanta 2025)

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7953675109

A gem, an exotic tale set in ancient Seleucid India

The king is Menander I Soter (reigned 160-135 BCE), conqueror of the Punjab, not Meander the Greek playwright. The sage is the Buddhist monk Nāgasena. Their historic meeting was the subject of the Buddhist tract Milindapañha (Questions of Milinda). This is the India of the Seleucids, which I have never read another book about.

Our narrator is Plato, not the Greek philosopher. Plato grows up feeling that his father Megacles has thwarted his chance for a good life. He wouldn’t let him attend the Academy, where Plato could have developed his innate talent for languages. But Megacles hopes for fame and remuneration for his magnum opus, a ‘true story’ about his trip—to the Moon. On the Moon—he saw them—lived ‘green-skinned giants that exhaled hot steam out of their nostrils, four-armed walruses with transparent tusks who rode on buffaloes day and night, hairy bugs with human bosoms who spoke three languages at once, and plant-people with mouths in their hands’.

Plato and his father independently have drunken evenings which overlap with larger events happening around them and set them off on new adventures. When Buddhist sages come to town, to bring the Dharma to King Menander, their prospects improve.

Plato has adorable insights on the differences between Indian and Greek cultures, looking up to the Greeks. I loved the primitive explanations of scientific phenomena. I adored the childhood memory of his father seizing members of the Agora crowd to stage his impromptu plays.

Seleucid India was so unfamiliar to me that it took me a while to get my bearings. The character is something unusual to me, an Indo-Greek monk, yet his personality shines through, and we feel his emotions from page one. The character of Megacles is wonderful, too.

The introduction of Buddhist ideas works well, expressed in the context of the lovely story of Nāgasena and the king, but Plato, individually, experiences a sort of nirvana as he gains closure on the events in his life and himself embraces Buddhism.

The denouement and climax is just fabulous—with Sagala under threat, Plato’s newfound spiritual composure and Megacles’ inventiveness save the day. As well as the magical ending.

Sumptuous writing, lightly humorous, full of myths and adventures, with beautiful descriptions and metaphors. Sagala, his hometown, is as ‘the ruby in the bellybutton of India’. The rhythmic movements of sex are ‘like those made by shoals of jellyfish as they pulsate through the seas’.

A lovely, exotic tale, completely unique.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.