The Gentleman From Peru, gives poignant insight into a story of regret, fate and epic love. Raul, a 60-year-old, white-bearded, lone wolf staying at a resort on the Amalfi Coast is the Gentleman  featured in The Gentleman from Peru by Andre Caiman.

When a group of college friends find themselves marooned at a luxurious hotel on the Amalfi Coast in Italy, including Margot — a gallerist simply described as snarky. While their boat is being repaired, they can’t help but observe the daily routine of a few hotel guest- a mysterious, white-bearded stranger who sits on the veranda each night and smokes one cigarette, sometimes even two. When the group decides to invite the elegant traveller to lunch with them, they cannot begin to imagine the miraculous abilities, strange wisdom, and a life-changing story he is about to impart to one of the friends in particular.

Rahu introduces himself as  someone who can heal physical pain simply by touch, and also appears he has clairvoyant powers. He ingratiates himself into the group by telling each one something about their lives that no one else could have known.

Raul can indeed travel through the underworld and guide people back to their previous lives. Like Shakespeare’s Prospero on his island – he is waiting for someone  possibly Margot, from his past to return  and set him free. Rahul believes to be a reincarnation of his first love, Maria, who died 40 years ago. If true lovers don’t die together, he thinks, then the partner who lives on is doomed to wait for his beloved to return. It may indeed take them several years and rebirths to reunite – but eventually reunite them. Raul says “it’s life that is provisional, not love”.

The only thing we know about the Americans in the present life are their job titles. Evidently, Margot’s present self matters little to Raul – since he is fixated on Maria’s reincarnation.

When Margot finds out about Maria, Raul says: “ You see, you didn’t die. You just went away”. Yet  we don’t even hear that much about Marya.

While the dazzling erotic prose with the older male lover plot grips you right from the start. The Gentleman from Peru is a novel with patched-up explanation as to why this gentleman from Peru should end up in bed with a young woman. The human soul awaits in the shadows of a lifetime for true love and alignment, like the ancient Indian myth, reincarnation, the religious or philosophical belief that the soul or spirit, after biological death, begins a new life in a new body that may be human, animal or spiritual depending on Karma – the moral quality of the previous life’s actions, as single eternal soul is reborn multiple times in different physical forms.

The Gentleman from Peru by Andre Caiman, Faber & Faber £12.99, 176 pages.