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The Enchantress of Florence
by Salman Rushdie
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About This Book
ISBN13: 9780375504334 |
Review-a-Day (What is Review-a-Day?)
"Salman Rushdie is so much identified with seriousness — his choice of subjects, from Kashmir to Andalusia; his position as a literary negotiator of East and West; his decade and more of internal exile in hiding from the edict of a fanatical theocrat — that it can be easy to forget how humorous he is. In much the same way, his extraordinary knowledge of classical literature sometimes causes people to overlook his command of the vernacular." Christopher Hitchens, The Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Atlantic Monthly review)
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
A tall, yellow-haired, young European traveler calling himself "Mogor dell'Amore" the Mughal of Love, arrives at the court of the Emperor Akbar, lord of the great Mughal empire, with a tale to tell that begins to obsess the imperial capital, a tale about a mysterious woman, a great beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery, and her impossible journey to the far-off city of Florence.
The Enchantress of Florence is the story of a woman attempting to command her own destiny in a man's world. It is the story of two cities, unknown to each other, at the height of their powers — the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant Akbar the Great wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire, and the treachery of his sons, and the equally sensual city of Florence during the High Renaissance, where Niccolò Machiavelli takes a starring role as he learns, the hard way, about the true brutality of power.
Vivid, gripping, irreverent, bawdy, profoundly moving, and completely absorbing, The Enchantress of Florence is a dazzling book full of wonders by one of the world's most important living writers.
Review:
"Entertainment of the highest literary order." Booklist (starred review)
Review:
"For Rushdie, the pen is a magician's wand... If The Enchantress of Florence doesn’t win this year's Man Booker I'll curry my proof copy and eat it." John Sutherland, Financial Times (London)
Review:
"This brilliant, fascinating, generous novel swarms with gorgeous young women both historical and imagined, beautiful queens and irresistible enchantresses...[a] sumptuous, impetuous mixture of history with fable. But in the end, of course, it is the hand of the master artist, past all explanation, that gives this book its glamour and power, its humour and shock, its verve, its glory. It is a wonderful tale, full of follies and enchantments." Ursula K Le Guin, The Guardian (London)
Review:
"[A] prodigious fever dream of a book... A beguiling, incandescent tale of travel, treachery, and transformation set in the Renaissance Florence of Machiavelli and the Medicis and in India's Mughal Empire." Elle
Review:
"The Enchantress of Florence reminds us, in case we may have forgotten, that [Rushdie] can tell a story across East and West better than anyone else in the language." John Brotton, The Telegraph (London)
Review:
"Readers who succumb to the spell of Rushdie's convoluted, cross-continental fable may find it enchanting....Rapturously poetic in places, very funny in others, yet the novel ultimately challenges both patience and comprehension." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"Rushdie has given us a fable, a fairy tale for adults if you will, wrapped in history. It can be read for the pure enjoyment of the story, and as literature of the highest order. I was totally enchanted by one of the most talented and important contemporary authors." Charlotte Observer
Review:
"In a world in which many readers seem to crave fact after fact after fact...the novelist, the last alchemist, miraculously turns fact into something greater, and as if transforming clay bricks into gold, gives facts life." The Chicago Tribune
About the Author
Salman Rushdie is the author of nine previous novels: Grimus; Midnight's Children (which was awarded the Booker Prize in 1981 and, in 1993, was judged to be the "Booker of Bookers," the best novel to have won that prize in its first twenty-five years); Shame (winner of the French Prix de Meilleur Livre Etranger); The Satanic Verses (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel); Haroun and the Sea of Stories (winner of the Writers Guild Award); The Moor's Last Sigh (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel); The Ground Beneath Her Feet (winner of the Eurasian section of the Commonwealth Prize); Fury (a New York Times Notable Book); and Shalimar the Clown (a Time Book of the Year). He is also the author of a book of stories, East, West, and three works of nonfiction: Imaginary Homelands, The Jaguar Smile, and The Wizard of Oz. He is co-editor of Mirrorwork, an anthology of contemporary Indian writing.
What Our Readers Are Saying
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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
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Casey R., June 24, 2008 (view all comments by Casey R.)
Salman Rushdie is a master of humanism, he sees the "world too clearly" and tirelessly writes to clarify it for the rest of us. "The Enchantress of Florence" deals with Akbar the Great's reign of Mughal India, where he founded the real life "House of Worship" which incorporated tenets from all religions, and recognized that maybe, humans create God for themselves, and not the other way around. Rushdie also takes his readers to Medici Florence to understand Machiavelli's struggle for a solution to the conundrum of power. Packed with instructive history and fantastical magic, this book is amazing, I wanted to immediately start it over after I read the last page. It also includes an amazing bibliography of all the sources Rushdie used, for further reading.
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tregatt, June 12, 2008 (view all comments by tregatt)
Years ago (more than I'd like to think about), one of my tutors recommended that I read Salman Rushdie's HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES. I tried to finish the novel but have to confess that I couldn't -- I probably lacked the sophistication back then to appreciate the exquisite prose style and painstaking craftsmanship that went into creating that award winning novel. And truthfully speaking I rather thought ack then that Salman Rushdie was going to be one of the many award winning authours that would never make it onto my reading lists. But something about THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE beckoned, and I decided to give it a go. And I'm truly glad that I did, because it turned out to be an exceptionally enthralling and compelling read. Constructed somewhat like THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, Salman Rushdie's latest novel is a series of short stories that follows the supposed adventures of Qara Koz, a grandaunt of the Emperor Akbar's, and that of her greatest love, the mercenary general, Argalia. Many of the stories are based on some historical fact, but are told with elements of the fantastical, so that the mood and atmosphere of the novel is really quite fairy-tale like and dazzling. Also adding to this magical tone is Rushdie's powerfully lyrical and vivid prose style and brilliantly rendered scenes. All in all, this was a very, very fascinating and beguiling read that enraptures, dazzles and seduces. Not a book to be missed -- and I think I may be finally grown-up enough to appreciate the authour's other novels.
View all 2 comments
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780375504334
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Random House
- Subject:
- Women
- Subject:
- Kings and rulers
- Subject:
- General
- Copyright:
- 2008
- Publication Date:
- June 2008
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 368
- Dimensions:
- 9.48x6.49x1.11 in. 1.40 lbs.
