Desmond explores perplexity regarding ultimacy--the metaphysical perplexity that precedes and exceeds scientific and commonsense curiosity.

Oddball and loner Oliver Quinn was raised by his uncle, the proprietor of New York's most bizarre emporium of Oriental rugs, Ozymandias & Son. Zoned out more than he's zoned in, Oliver perceives patterns in everything - from fallen autumn leaves in Central Park, to the freckles on a stranger's face. When his uncle gives him a mysterious paperweight - said to have been in the family for centuries - since it was discovered by a farmer on the Mongolian Steppes - Oliver's life changes in the most extraordinary way. Gaining entry into the secret Realm that shrouds all our lives, he learns what he imagines to be reality is no more than a fragment of what actually exists. In a multiverse, where every permutation is not only possible but certain, our world is an insignificant backwater. With the veil lifted, Oliver is introduced to a parallel life form with which we share the multiverse... The mysterious and all-powerful race of Jinn. Far from the loveable blue-skinned giants projected by Hollywood, Jinn are capable of wreaking terror on an unknown scale. When they go rogue, as they frequently do, they must be captured. This perilous task is entrusted to the bravest fraternity of warriors in existence - The Jinn Hunters. Stumbling into the secret heart of the Realm, Oliver learns of the Prism. A vast penitentiary fashioned from sheets of impregnable glass, it contains legions of incarcerated Jinn. But, as Oliver soon comes to understand, his arrival is no accident. Having brooded for an eternity - since being imprisoned by King Solomon - the most evil Jinn in all existence has just escaped... Nequissimus. The future of the Realm rests on Oliver Quinn, whose ancestral bloodline is primed to capture the great Jinn, thereby saving not only humanity, but the entire multiverse. A cross between The Thousand and One Nights and The Men in Black, THE PRISM is the first awe-inspiring novel in Tahir Shah's much-awaited JINN HUNTER series. Quite possibly the most original book of its age, it lures the reader into a Twilight Zone conjured from pure imagination.

Harihar Datt Tiwari, better known as Hariya Hercules is an infinitely patient man. He spends all his free time attending to his blind, infirm, chronically constipated father Girvan Datt Tiwari, who, before being afflicted with chronic bad luck, was a pillar of society. So when his father dies, Hariya, and everyone in the community, is stunned. Girvan Datt-ji leaves behind a trunk containing some jewellery and a clutch of pornographic pictures in which he is himself an active, enthusiastic participant. In the trunk, Hariya also finds a letter to his father from Lama Rigyang Cho of Lahaul-Spiti. The letter describes a curse Girvan has brought upon the Tiwari family by stealing the trunk from the deity of Goomalling, a mythical place somewhere in the Himalayas. Ever the dutiful son, Hariya goes looking for Goomalling to return the cursed object and mysteriously vanishes. After Hariya's exit from the scene, the story of his journey, his motives and his perplexity becomes communal property and soon there are as many versions as there are people. But as the narrator tries to piece these accounts together, they continually shift and change, creating a dark, uncertain world of hearsay and half-truths. And Hariya becomes variously a comic, tragic and, to many, even a noble figure.