First edition, a rare satire set in the Indies.

First edition, a rare satire set in the Indies.

Full of dense, enigmatic and largely anti-religious ideas, the orientalist setting of the work relies heavily on both the East Indies (the Malabar of the title) but also the Middle East. The book is unquestionably odd, not least the author's use of the anagram: there are, for example, critiques of 'Raison' and 'Religion,' but they here become 'Rasoni' and 'Roligine.' Clearly the author had no intention of being misunderstood, as even these rather blatant anagrams are further explained in a key at the end of the book. Perhaps the transparency of these anagrams was the book's undoing as much as the patently fake imprint (Andrinopole – now Edirne – is in Turkey): it was condemned to be burnt by an arrêt du Parlement in 1734, which does add to its rarity.

Attributed variously to the abbé Lenglet Dufresnoy, and to one Quesnel, who is mentioned in the preface, and who died in the Bastille, the author is actually thought to have been Louis Pierre de Longue, a now rather obscure dramatist and man-of-letters.