Perantulo is a wandering sage, spreading his mystic pagan wisdom from Khaluvia to Mesqa-Murro, from the chestnut forests of Sevennola to the rain-lashed archipelago of Prydina. He is the fictional creation of "il fachiro," an Eastern philosopher who arrived in Renaissance Florence in 1459 and challenged Cosimo di Medici and Marsilio Ficino's Neoplatonist revival with his own empowering and anarchic metaphysics. Paul is a writer visiting 21st century Italy who, while laying himself open to inspiration from the energies and art of the Florentine past, comes across an historical account of "il fachiro" and his fables. But he, too, resides inside a book - on one of the three layers of reality within "The Fakir of Florence."