The Years of Rice and Salt

Small Mongol horseman, vessel of the Monkey spirit, former soldier under Temur; survives plague-lands, lightning, slavery, and the treasure fleet; later escapes with Kyu; guides Kyu in the bardo after both die.

Black eunuch navigating the bardo after death; receives instruction from Bold, fails to follow guidance, hides in a womb-grass, and re-enters the human realm with a resolve to do better.

Senior Mongol officer who leads the scouting party and reports the plague-emptied lands to Temur; ordered killed alongside Bold.

Ruler of a vast army; discovers his plans to conquer the west are pre-empted by plague; in fury orders Bold and Psin executed; struck down by lightning.

The short Arab merchant who purchases Bold at the Alexandria slave market, intending to resell him for profit in Zanj.

Admiral of the Chinese treasure fleet; performs a ceremony to Tianfei during the storm and leads the crew's prayers; returns the fleet safely to Hangzhou.

Hangzhou merchant who purchases Bold and Kyu at Phoenix Hill; owner of a lakeside restaurant; characterized as incompetent with finances and prone to kicking slaves.

Shen's eldest wife who runs the restaurant kitchen with energy and intelligence; takes Bold as her errand companion on market trips; curious and outward-facing, with cosmetics she never uses.

Indian girl born at midnight into a household of three daughters; suffers severe colic framed as dual-soul combat; later betrothed to Gopal of Dharwar at the Durga Puja festival.

Kokila's mother; struggles to comfort the colicky infant while managing the household and her husband's diminishing favour after three daughters.

Kokila's father; losing favour in his household after three daughters; arranges Kokila's betrothal to Gopal.

Third son of headman Shastri of Dharwar; thin-faced, intent-looking; betrothed to Kokila at the Durga Puja in a wordless exchange.

Headman of Dharwar and Gopal's father; unpopular for autocratic rule, exiling a blacksmith without calling the panchayat.

Kokila's companion who learns herbal medicine from the local dai; accompanies her on firewood-gathering expeditions.

A tigress who observes a human battle, feeds on the dead, then guides a wounded human survivor through the forest and away from his pursuers out of confounding curiosity rather than hunger.

Sufi mystic and qadi; survives house arrest under Akbar through a mystical illumination experience, travels west with Maghribi scholars, crosses to al-Andalus, and joins the Sultana Katima's Caravan of Fools as spiritual teacher.

Mughal emperor; accepts Bistami's tactical advice on Gujarat but then places him under house arrest; appears in Bistami's mystical vision with black eyes, denying their soul-bond.

Akbar's general; executes rebel mirzas at the riverside; regards Bistami with suspicion after Bistami turns away from the executions.

Chief Khaldunian scholar among the Maghribi sufi travelers; guides Bistami westward, introduces him to convivencia history, and proposes naturalistic explanations for the plague.

Al-Andalusi resident at the ribat; argues for divine judgment as plague explanation but also hosts and reassures Bistami about the safety of al-Andalus.

Wife of Sultan Mawji Darya; originally from al-Majriti; bare-headed, pale-eyed, short-sleeved; leads the Caravan of Fools; recognized by Bistami as the soul Akbar's vision told him to seek; recruits Bistami as the caravan's sufi teacher.

Youngest son of the new caliph; handsome, gracious, devoted to the idea of convivencia; leads a diverse hegira north from al-Andalus into Firanja to found a new city.

Annamese admiral commanding the Chinese fleet; pragmatic, occasionally brutal, capable of wonder; takes hostages on the American continent and later appears in the bardo.

Kheim's intellectual complement; obsessed with longitude, collects Miwok vocabulary, counsels caution, and appears alongside Kheim in the bardo.

Six-year-old daughter of the Miwok headman; rapidly acquires Mandarin; venerated by sailors as the goddess Tianfei; defended by Kheim in the bardo court.

Young Travancori woman, dark-skinned, thick-eyebrowed; joins Bao's class with sharp scepticism; the final named character in the novel.

Acts as the human lens through which the reader observes Khalid and Iwang; acquires books and instruments, manages Nadir politically, suffers the plague deaths of his family, and reflects spiritually on all discoveries.

One-handed master of the compound who drives systematic experimentation—optics, void pumps, acoustics, microscopy—while under political pressure to produce military innovations for the Khan; dies inside the plague catastrophe.

Khalid's closest scientific collaborator; designs lenses, derives refraction laws, constructs the microscope; contemplates religious conversion; enters a distracted humming state as investigations deepen.

Head of the sufi ribat in the Registan; counsels Bahram that love, not intellect, is the path to reach Khalid's inner consciousness.

Runs the household with strict authority; privately terrified of the Khan's instability; contracts plague and dies after nursing her children.

Sultan Selim III; employs Ismail as chief doctor; participates personally in dissections; questions Ismail about Firanja during a visit to the seraglio.

Powerful court official who monitors and pressures Khalid's compound for military deliverables; his own influence at court appears to be waning as the Manchurian threat approaches.

Senior mathematician at Sher Dor Madressa who witnesses Khalid's light experiments and engages in collegial philosophical dialogue.

Hindu man with whom Bahram discusses Iwang's possible conversion; frames all gods as aspects of Brahman.

First in the compound to show signs of plague; her illness initiates the catastrophic sequence of deaths.

Foreign man of round flat face and scarred chest, inducted as Hodenosaunee chief; delivers an oratorical prophecy of colonial invasion and urges the league to arm and expand.

Onondaga sachem who presides over the council; also a recurring bardo soul who attacks bureaucratic gods and resists forgetting.

Wife of Keeper of the Wampum; pragmatic and observant; in the bardo reads 'The Jade Record' and devises the plan to resist the potion of forgetting.

Jati member in the bardo; remembers past failed tactics; successfully fakes drinking Meng's forgetting potion.

Kang's husband; writes theoretical essays on civilizational collision and historical progress; attempts to mediate between Qing and Muslim communities; author of 'Wealth and the Four Great Inequalities'; privately doubts his intellectual talents.

Kang's youngest son; nervous and unhappy under her strict tutelage; secretly cuts off his own queue, triggering her breakdown.

Household attendant or servant; finds the severed queue; tries to manage the household crisis and eventually notifies Kang's eldest son.

Iagogeh's niece; briefly comments on Fromwest before being told to tend the soup.

Chinese woman, poet and anthologist; lives in Lanzhou with Ibrahim; observes Muslim influx with critical detachment; pregnant during the flood; writes 'Treatise on the History of Women of Hunan'; authors materialist theory of religion; final poem ends Book Six.

Present during the flood escape, helps push Kang up the ladder.

Present during the flood escape, helps push Kang up the ladder alongside Pao.

Armenian-origin Ottoman doctor who served Sultan Selim III; renowned for anatomical work; arrives in Travancore; engages with Buddhist medical theory; meets the Kerala and Wasco at a garden party.

Abbess of the Travancori monastery; hosts Ismail; explains Chinese and Buddhist medical theory; introduces Ismail to the reincarnate girl-lama, the Kerala, and Wasco.

Short, compact, handsome Travancori ruler; commands a highly disciplined army; explains Travancore's rise through Sikh alliance and Japanese shipbuilders; conquered Konstantiniyye; advocates pan-Indian confederation.

Indigenous man from Yingzhou (North America), representative of the Hodenosaunee League; speaks fluent Persian; describes Muslim colonial presence on east coast, Travancori arrivals, and his people's situation; appears physically striking and analytically sharp.

Japanese servant boy who retrieves silkworm eggs from a flooded valley, rescues Peng-ti and her baby, and is recruited by Gen as a message-runner for Japanese resistance against China.

Chinese woman with a baby whom Kiyoaki rescues from a flood-stranded island; she decides to stay in the city and offers to help Kiyoaki work against China.

Peng-ti's infant daughter, rescued from the flooded island, adopted as a symbol of the new life in the city.

Man who recruits Kiyoaki into Japanese resistance work, warns him of potential secret war with China, and arranges his lodging at the chandlery.

Chinese soldier enduring decades of trench warfare in the Gansu Corridor; spiritually reflective, debates reincarnation and the meaning of the war with Iwa, and grieves Kuo's death.

Bai's companion soldier; brings news from the comm cave, performs funeral rites for Kuo, and debates the soul's survival after death with Bai near the Bodhi Tree.

Senior soldier with caustic laughter who has kept Bai's spirits up through years of trench warfare; killed instantly when a Muslim supershell lands on him, leaving only his severed hand.

Young woman living under male household restriction in Turi; intellectually curious, chafes against harem life, and is deeply attentive to her aunt Idelba's scientific and personal situation.

Budur's aunt; a brilliant mathematician and physicist formerly working in Nsara who returned to Turi's harem after her husband's death; growing increasingly restless, she holds dangerous scientific knowledge about mass-energy equivalence.

Budur's cousin; performs rooftop magic spells and craves male attention; participates in the secret rooftop expeditions.

Fiercely analytical historian and lecturer in Nsara; delivers a blistering critique of Islamic civilizational failure; becomes Budur's mentor and lover; sceptical of religion and spiritualism.

Iranian exile and war veteran who lost an arm; a moral voice in cafe debates, arguing for retaining Islamic compassion and mercy as a corrective to Chinese cruelty.

Friend of Kirana's with an eyepatch; introduces Budur to Kirana's circle of singers and theatre people after the lecture.

Hanea's daughter; high-spirited, confident young Hodenosaunee woman who walks Kirkwall with Budur while their mothers hold a diplomatic meeting.

Ganagweh's mother; acquaintance of Idelba involved in diplomatic relations between Hodenosaunee and Nsarene interests; attends Idelba's funeral.

A seer who holds a séance for followers, speaking about reincarnation and past-life bonds; businesslike and composed under Kirana's open scepticism.

Frankish oud player who reflects on the vanished Franks, concluding they are 'our jinns' — unknowable projective screens for any speculation.

Small, self-absorbed physicist who was Idelba's research partner; unexpectedly deep in grief at her death; begins treating Budur as a near-equal after Idelba's passing.

Young Beijing revolutionary who follows Kung into civil war, later becomes a diplomat in Burma, attends Zhu Isao's history seminars, and ends as an aged teacher reflecting on history's meaning.

Charismatic and imperturbable Beijing revolutionary, former sanwu street boy, who becomes a prominent military college leader and organizer of the civil war against warlords.

Half-Japanese founder of the League of All Peoples, scholar of historiography and reincarnation chronicles, who delivers seminars on emplotment modes and unanswered historical questions.

Revolutionary officer convicted of raping and killing a female prisoner; executed by Kung's order.

Elderly Bao as widower, garden-keeper, and teacher holding seminars under valley oaks, who summarizes the novel's historical and karmic vision to his students.

Bao's partner or housemate; present at the New Year egg-hunt and when Bao departs for class.

Young female student from Aozhani who persistently presses Bao on whether secular reframings of reincarnation preserve personal consciousness.