One could be forgiven for mistaking Kay’s novels for historical fiction: they are meticulously researched, and offer the immersive believability rendered by skilled practitioners of the more traditional craft. The Lions of Al-Rassan delivers a satisfying fictionalization of the Reconquista - the difficulties with that term notwithstanding - during the period of El Cid set in a fictional Iberia of the 11th century. In a convincing portrayal, Kay restores the culture, architecture and politics of late al-Andalus, replete with characters who could have been a part. And romance, no, let’s not overlook the romance.

The novel is almost three decades old now. There were moments where I was shaken out of my reading engagement by a discovery. The intervening years have altered the experience of the book at least in a small way. Let me explain.

Why is it that Kay writes historical fantasy rather than historical fiction? The fantasy elements in his works are generally small ones, just enough to inform the reader that while the events may feel like the past of our own world, that is not actually the case. This world has two moons, not one. And a boy with some special knowledge, not particularly crucial to the plot.

Kay loves the description of his work as “history with a quarter-turn to the fantastic”. He has said he does this quarter-turn because he doesn’t like using real lives for his fiction. To The Guardian he said, “I’ve been calling it an epidemic of co-opting real lives, to do whatever we want to do with them. And as an artist, for my own process, I have a problem with this…..I’m happier not pretending I know anything about El Cid in Spain,” he says. “He’s a Spanish national hero. I’d rather invent a character inspired by him but clearly not identical to him. And then I feel liberated creatively. I steep myself in a period and then I twist it just that little bit to give myself the ethical and creative space that seems to work for me.”

Kay does his research and delivers fulfilling worldbuilding, but he is free to make things up, to get things wrong, to play with the history as he wishes. So why was I was periodically jolted from my reading? Memories of Salman Rushdie. Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa in 1989, the year after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Rushdie’s book is often called magical realism; apparently the realism was insufficiently magical. In the decades since the publication of The Lions of Al-Rassan and its narrative of the ending of Muslim rule in Spain, this thread of intolerance has not appreciably diminished. In numerous attentional interludes, I considered the safety of two moons and an alternate universe. What an affront to the imagination that such machinations may offer actual physical safety!

I like Kay’s work very much. This novel has a poignant beauty, as sympathetic characters committed to their loves, their people, their religions, teeter toward the inexorable end of a vanishing world.