Mark Twain said it so beautifully. Echoes of the time past reverberate in time present and send out ripples into time future. History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme and it certainly inspires fiction – as the countless historical novels testify.

But in Indian writing in English at least, historical novels are still in a minority and within the genre, history-based adventures are even rarer. This is a great pity for there is no history that lends itself to high drama as Indian history. The vast sweep of time, a cast of extraordinary characters, stunning locales and high action: all make it the ideal back-set for stories that can evoke the entire range of human emotion.

Aroon’s second novel, The Treasure of Kafur, is one such. A racy action-filled story set in Mughal India at the time of Akbar, the story centres around the fabulous lost treasure of Malik Kafur. Asian Age said the book breaks ‘new ground in the genre of adventure fiction.’ The book quickly went on to be a national bestseller as well.

Key characters in the book are researched carefully, as for example Akbar and Rana Pratap; yet others are a work of the imagination. But at the end of the day, The Treasure of Kafur will take you back in time and allow you to lose yourself in another era….