I just finished reading The Years of Rice and Salt by one of my favourite authors, Kim Stanley Robinson. Unlike the other stuff by him that I've read (eg. the Mars Trilogy) this is set in the past - a re-telling of history since about the year 1,000 that posits Christianity being largely wiped out by the plague with a subsequent history dominated by clashes between Buddhist and Islamic empires.

Robinson's usual themes of anarchistic utopianism are nicely supplemented by his analysis of the interplay between empire and religion as we follow a group (he uses the term jati - although his use seems to be neither the Buddhist nor the Hindu meaning of that term) of beings who keep crossing paths throughout their reincarnated lives.

Given the Buddhist theme running through his more recent "Science in the Capitol" series it's clear that Robinson sees a connection between the "religion with no God" and his anarchist ideals of the utopian ordering of society.