The Enchantress of Florence [Hardcover]

`it braids love, magic and the storyteller's teasing art into a yarn as rich as any he has spun'
--Independent

`carefully wrought and often exquisite'

'it is the hand of the master artist, past all explanation, that gives this book its glamour and its power, its humour and shock, its verve, its glory. It is a wonderful tale full of follies and enchantments. East meets west with a clash of cymbals and a burst of fireworks'

`For Rushdie, as for the artists he writes about, the pen is a magician's wand. There is more magic than realism in this latest novel. But it is, I think, one of his best. If The Enchantress of Florence doesn't win this year's Man Booker I'll curry my proof copy and eat it'

A gorgeous, sensual novel set in Mughal India and Renaissance Florence.

`(Rushdie) has a rare mastery of language, and when you read his work you cannot help but feel you are in the company of a mighty intelligence...Salman Rushdie is undoubtedly one of our greatest storytellers'

`mesmerising, picaresque... It is a boisterous tale piled high with sex and adventure and fantasy'

`Rushdie is the master of spinning threads across cultures, time and place'

`SALMAN RUSHDIE'S new novel is a hall of mirrors. They distort and flatter, and above all, like those mirrors set by exits onto dangerous roads, they reveal what is hidden. Two great civilisations, the Moghul empire of Jalalluddin Muhammed Akbar, and the Florence of the Medicis and of Machiavelli, reflect on each other while they are linked by a series of fairytale improbabilities... It's a haul of stories, gathered with magpie glee, arranged to glitter. Self-consciousness is one of the book's main purposes. Rushdie keeps coming back to his reflections on the nature of story itself, and the way in which a human being understands himself and his dilemma through story... Rushdie brilliantly describes the imprisonment and torture of Machiavelli, and the influence of the dungeon on Machiavelli's ideas.... The Enchantress is not really about Qara Köz, or Simonetta Vespucci, or any other fabulous beauty. For all its proliferating surface dazzle, this is a book with few illusions. One after another the stories drop like masks. The solitude, harshness and illogicality of human life are accepted almost casually, without surprise'

`This is a rich feast of a book... richly imagined'

A tall, yellow-haired young European traveller calling himself 'Mogor dell'Amore', the Mughal of Love, arrives at the court of the real Grand Mughal, the Emperor Akbar, with a tale to tell that begins to obsess the whole imperial capital. The stranger claims to be the child of a lost Mughal princess, the youngest sister of Akbar's grandfather Babar: Qara Köz, 'Lady Black Eyes', a great beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery, who is taken captive first by an Uzbeg warlord, then by the Shah of Persia, and finally becomes the lover of a certain Argalia, a Florentine soldier of fortune, commander of the armies of the Ottoman Sultan. When Argalia returns home with his Mughal mistress the city is mesmerized by her presence, and much trouble ensues.

The Enchantress of Florence is the story of a woman attempting to command her own destiny in a man's world. It brings together two cities that barely know each other - the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant emperor wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire and the treachery of sons, and the equally sensual Florentine world of powerful courtesans, humanist philosophy and inhuman torture, where Argalia's boyhood friend "il Machia" - Niccolò Machiavelli - is learning, the hard way, about the true brutality of power. These two worlds, so far apart, turn out to be uncannily alike, and the enchantments of women hold sway over them both.

But is Mogor's story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess? And if he's a liar, must he die?

‘A wild and whirling novel’ Observer
A tall, yellow-haired young European traveller calling himself ‘Mogor dell’Amore’, the Mughal of Love, arrives at the court of the real Grand Mughal, the Emporer Akbar, with a tale to tell that begins to obsess the whole imperial capital. The stranger claims to be the child of a lost Mughal princess: Qara Köz, ‘Lady Black Eyes’, a great beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery, who became the lover of Argalia, a Florentine soldier. When Argalia returns home to Florence with his Mughal mistress the city is mesmerised by her presence and as two worlds are brought together by one woman attempting to command her own destiny, much trouble ensues.
But is Mogor’s story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess? And if Mogor is a liar, must he die?
‘Mesmerising, picaresque … It is a boisterous tale piled high with sex and adventure and fantasy’ Geordie Grieg, Tatler
‘My first desire on finishing it was to go back and re-read it. Like all of Rushdie’s work, the playfulness, the passion, the erudition and the sensuousness go hand in hand. It’s immensely rich and waiting to be unpacked on a whole number of levels…it’s one of his best’ Catherine Lockerbie, Scotsman
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Salman Rushdie is the author of nine novels, one collection of short stories, and four works of non-fiction, and the co-editor of The Vintage Book of Indian Writing. In 1993 Midnight's Children was judged to be the Booker of Bookers, the best novel to have won the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. The Moor's Last Sigh won the Whitbread Prize in 1995 and the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature in 1996. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.