By Julian Barnes. Random House Canada, 360 pp, $34.95, hardcover.

The curious case of George Edalji, a man born of a Parsee father turned English vicar and a Scottish mother, captures the interest of novelist Julian Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot; England, England). The bones of the story are arresting enough: Edalji, a real-life solicitor still living at home and sharing a bedroom with his father to boot, is convicted in 1903 of stealing out at night to murder livestock.

Despite astigmatism, a sedentary lifestyle, and unfamiliarity with animals, Edalji is found guilty of a series of crimes perpetrated by someone with seemingly perfect night vision, unmatched strength, and advanced horse whisperism.

Edalji found an unlikely cham--pion in Arthur Conan Doyle, just as he now finds one in Barnes. Doyle was outraged by the prima facie absurdity of the conviction and, at least here, by his chance to one-up his own creation, Sherlock Holmes. Barnes, the accent in this tone-perfect book suggests, is perhaps attracted as much by the narrative possibilities of Doyle's spiritualist beliefs as by the chance to set right Edalji's unfortunate fate. Certainly, Barnes leans heavily on the invisible, especially the pre-Freudian forces at play in the two men's psyches, though he is restricted in his language by the era's mouthful of marbles: "His understanding of the sexual act is diverse, though related more to its unfortunate consequences than to its joyful preliminaries and processes." Being Barnes, there's an Englishness to all this: Edalji's "supporters had assured him that his case was as significant as that of Dreyfus, that it revealed as much about England as the Frenchman's did about France…For all this, the name of Dreyfus had constantly increased in fame… He suspected that his obscurity was something to do with England itself. France, as he understood it, was a country of extremes, of violent opinion, violent principles and long memories. England was a quieter place, just as principled, but less keen on making a fuss."

Twinned with Doyle, the embodiment of both rational empiricism and esoteric individualism, of tradition and rebellion, Edalji offers a ready-made symbol for the twilight days of empire.

Julian Barnes appears next Friday (October 21) at 8 p.m. and next Saturday (October 22) at 7 p.m. at the Waterfront Theatre.