The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel

...I totally enjoyed the experience. The cover is beautiful and that's why I picked up the book in the first place. I had heard about him and the Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children, but had never sought to read them. I will now. He writes very languid, flowing verse that seem more like prose or poetry. The dialogue is exceptual and thought-provoking. I enjoyed the exchanges between the Sultan and his most "honorable advisor" (esp. how to prove there is no God) and the fable quality of the novel--think Arabian Nights. Lots of tongue-in-cheek conversations that you can't help but chuckle. Tons of detail, research and creativity. He weaves historical references in and out of the novels's framework without telling to much, ie. it took me a minute to realize the novel by Machevelli was "The Little Prince". I loved it.

A yellow-haired foreigner has arrived at the palace of the Eastern Emperor, Akbar. While many such strangers would be sent on their way, this man is given an audience with the emperor. He starts to tell a fabulous story, and soon, makes the incredible claim that he is actually the Emperor's uncle; son of a famous beauty who was a daughter of the court but who was captured in a war and then chose to remain with her captor when freed. Due to this refusal to return bak to court life, her name is erased from the family history, but there are still some older people who remember her or her story.

This woman is the Enchantress of Florence, but that is just one of her many names. She is called Angelina, The Woman With Dark Eyes, The Enchantress, Qara Koz and other names. She lives in various places, always with men who will give up anything and everything to have her love. When necessary, she picks up and moves on to the next life, the next man.

Salmon Rushdie plays with several themes here. There is the theme of each person knowing a different side of another; this theme is represented by the multiple names that each character has. There is the theme of love and what will be done to sustain love. The question of whether in each relationship there is one who loves and one who is loved is explored. Another theme explores the lives of those who travel and contrasts them with those who choose to remain in their homeplace. Rushdie repeats one phrase that ties the stories of the East and the Italian city of Florence together. The curse of the human race is not that we are so different from one another, but that we are so alike.

This book is highly recommended. The language is lush, and the story moves back and forth, with myriad characters that require the reader's full attention. The characters are finely drawn and even those who have minimal parts to play are fully developed. The book leaves the reader with much to think about. For those readers who enjoy fantasy and non-linear plotlines, this book is a gift.

Finally a book from Salman Rushdie that I could read and enjoy! I had tried a couple of his earlier works including the 'Midnight's Children' but found them too confusing and complex.

This is a wonderful story based in 16th century India during the time of Akbar the Great, the most well known Mughal emperor. The visitor from Florence, Italy comes to the Mughal court with a secret to tell to the emperor and the story keeps the reader enthralled throughout. The contrasting lifestyles and philosophies of the western and eastern world is beautifully brought out by the author. Mr.Rushdie's in depth understanding of history, religion, culture and philosophy is obvious and his ability to mesh them all together to bring out a great book is outstanding. Every line contains so much information that I am astounded on how much research that must have gone into this book.

This one deserves many prizes!! (maybe a Nobel?)

The history of the Mughals from Babar to Akbar is brought out well and Akbar's reign is covered in detail. The construction of the city Fatehpur Sikri and its final desertion is built into the story of this book. Akbar's famous courtiers such as Birbal and Abul Fazl makes the story even more appealing to Indian readers. Since I had visited Fatehpur Sikri recently, I found the references to this city (which is well preserved even now) even more interesting.

Some pictures from Fatehpur Sikri are in my blog samsanthosh.blogspot.com

In THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE, his 11th work of fiction, Salman Rushdie has given the breath of life to a world completely alien to our own, and yet, in distinctive ways, rooted in a reality possible for us to recognize. Rushdie is a master teller of tales, and the seductiveness of this delightful work, which blends characters from the historical to the fantastic, is certain to burnish that reputation.

The novel opens in the late 16th century, when a yellow-haired character in a multicolored coat, calling himself Mogor dell'Amore, appears in Fatehpur Sikri, the gleaming capital city of the Mughal Empire, ruled by Akbar the Great, a descendant of Genghis Khan and Timur the Lame (Tamerlane). Akbar is in many ways a strikingly modern man, questioning the existence of God and presiding over spirited debates in the Tent of the New Worship between competing philosophical schools --- the Water Drinkers, religious thinkers and mystics, and the Wine Lovers, philosophers and scientists. And yet this same rationalist skeptic has created an imaginary queen named Jodha, to whom he's more devoted than any of the dozens of beautiful wives who comprise his harem.

The Mogor, bearing a stolen letter containing credentials as the ambassador of England's Queen Elizabeth I, describes himself as "a man with a secret...a secret which only the emperor's ears may hear." Woven through the balance of the novel, the storyteller (born Niccolò Vespucci) unveils that secret, narrating the mysterious, enthralling tale of the devastatingly beautiful Qara Köz (Lady Black Eyes), the enchantress of the novel's title, and her companion, the Mirror. Born into the Persian Empire, Qara Köz is captured by Antonino Argalia, a Florentine soldier of fortune now in the service of the Ottoman Turks. Argalia's boyhood friends include the starkly realistic political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli and Agostino Vespucci, cousin of the New World explorer, Amerigo.

Argalia returns with his gorgeous prize to Florence, and when Qara Köz and the Mirror arrive, Rushdie tells, in a typical example of the lavish description with which the novel is suffused, how "their faces shone with the light of revelation, as though in those early days of their unveiling they were capable of sucking light in from the eyes of all who looked upon them and then flinging it out again as their own personal brilliance, with mesmeric, fantasy-inducing effects." Argalia assumes the role of condottiere of the city, chosen by the ruling Medici family to protect its interests in the myriad political and religious conflicts of the early Renaissance. Qara Köz, now known as Angelica, captivates the citizens of Florence, and it appears a golden age is at hand. But when the Medici ruler, Lorenzo II, dies suddenly and under mysterious circumstances, the Florentines suspect their cherished enchantress has practiced witchcraft to bring about his death and drive her into exile.

Rushdie's tale overflows with fantastic characters and amazing stories: a court painter named Dashwanth who literally paints himself into a portrait, or a "glowing lake" that "looked like a sea of molten gold" transformed into a "muddy hollow where once...sweet water had glistened" in a matter of days. There are magic potions and spells, like the "Great Uzbeg Anti-Shiite Potato and Sturgeon Curse," albino giants, witches, heroes and cowards, scoundrels and fools. There's even a gruesome account of a battle between Argalia's Ottoman forces and the army of Vlad the Impaler, the cruel ruler on whose life the tale of Dracula is based.

Alongside these vivid creations of Rushdie's imagination are well-known historical figures like Akbar and Machiavelli, and lesser-known ones like the Italian warlord Andrea Doria. As much as THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE is infused with striking characters and lavishly spun tales, Rushdie also toys with big ideas: the relations between men and women, the cultural encounter between East and West, the uses of political power and the struggle between modernity and tradition.

The novel is multilayered and complex, and there's some degree of patience required at times to absorb all the characters and place names tossed into the bubbling stew. It's probably not a bad idea to have an historical resource close by when reading. Indeed, Rushdie lists more than four pages of works he consulted in researching this book.

"The story was completely untrue," one of Rushdie's characters notes, "but the untruth of untrue stories could sometimes be of service in the real world." Those words might serve as a suitable epigraph for a work that is itself so enchanting and teeming with life.

--- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg

This is storytelling at its best. The bards of old must have told tales like this, captivating their audience for hours,days at the time.An Art form that has almost been forgotten by us Westerners is back. Think of Homer,The thousand and one Nights,Aladdin,Sheherazade,Simbad, Boccacio you will find something of them here. Proud kings,great warriors,sorcerers and beautiful ladies,love and hate,ambition and greed,friendship and betrayal mixed with history and reflexions on matters as impotant as the existence of God, our obsession with power and the loneliness at the top, this novel has it all.Each page is a delight, never boring,creating a continues stream of dazzling images and characters bigger than life. This novel carries you away,making you forget for a while your every day problems and that is what good story-telling is all about.
I will re-read this book soon, it simply is too glorious a read to gather dust on a bookshelf.

A fantastic tale told with flowery words, lyrical phrasing and poetry reminiscent of olden days, keeping with the author's usual style; however as with his other work, the story flows too slowly, to retain the reader's interest until the end.

this book is a difficult read. mr Rushdie writes like poet and uses very archaic words and terms. but story is interesting and demanding in the final section it becomes a little boring and fluffy . no big twists. but if you already know some of Persian or Indian history then it becomes even more compelling. the writer tries to insert some philosophic ideas but not that strong. it is more sweet storytelling.i prefer Saramago as a magic realist writer with deep philosophic thoughts.

Rushdie has often been torn between two opposing interests. On the one hand, he often has a moral that he wants to impart. Midnight's Children was about the dissolution and insanity of India; Shalimar the Clown was an overwrought, heartbroken thing about Kashmir; The Moor's Last Sigh was an impassioned story of a writer on the run from a death sentence -- an obvious allusion to the price that the government of Iran had put on his head. (That death sentence was, itself, in retaliation for The Satanic Verses, which is Rushdie's worst novel. If you're going to be sentenced to death, I say, be sentenced to death for a great work of art.) On the other side, he wants to just tell a good story, with or without a moral.

Sometimes, as in the case of The Satanic Verses -- and to an extent in Midnight's Children -- Rushdie loses all discipline. He's self-consciously creating a phantasmagoria, which is a danger for someone who writes in the magical-realist tradition of García Márquez: rather than injecting bits of magic into the daily lives of your characters, sometimes you dive off the deep end and create a work of fiction that really wants to be a fantasy work. This was the trouble in The Satanic Verses.

Finally, Rushdie sometimes wants to paint the world as a carnival, and the brushstrokes lose all control. (Think here of the films of Federico Fellini.) Midnight's Children almost suffered from this, but Rushdie reined it in.

All of which is prologue to The Moor's Last Sigh and The Enchantress of Florence. These are Rushdie's masterworks. They inject fantasy where it's necessary, tell a captivating story, keep Rushdie's frenetic intelligence in check, and never let a moral overpower the novel's own momentum.

Structurally, the story is similar to the 1001 Arabian Nights, though it doesn't recurse as deeply as the Arabian Nights does. The story begins at a beautiful oasis of a city, presided over by an emperor who -- at least according to his PR -- possesses all the virtues and none of the faults of ordinary mortals. He is the living Truth itself. He refers to himself as "We," inasmuch as he embodies the people themselves.

Into this city, and directly to this grand emperor, comes our hero (sort of -- remember that there are stories within stories, so there are several heroes) with a vast secret to tell. He's a magician of sorts, wearing a strange coat in which endless objects can hide. Where has this strange man come from? What does he have to tell the emperor? How will he get through the many walls surrounding His Majesty?

This is the stuff of great fun. I don't think I'm giving away much if I tell you that he does make it through to the emperor, through the use of magical potions of a special sort. Every time Rushdie could stop and tell a little story -- say, about how the potions were made, or what they contain -- he does, and each time he does I got tickled. These are terrific stories.

Our hero himself has a story to tell the emperor. That story constitutes more or less the entire book. Most of the time we forget that we're inside the inner stories; Rushdie has wrapped us up completely within it. The inner story is where we hear about the character in the title: the Enchantress is the most beautiful woman in the world, the most beautiful woman anyone has ever seen or ever will see. Her mere presence causes otherwise stoic men to fall to their knees and either pray for her or pray for themselves (even the men themselves aren't clear which it is).

And so forth. The storytelling here is without peer. Knights with skin as white as death, court intrigues, epic battles ... this is a throwback to an earlier kind of storytelling, and what a skilled throwback it is.

At the same time, it's a history piece. The grand emperor with whom we started is Akbar the Great (which, Rushdie reminds us, is redundant: "Akbar," or some part of it, means "great"). Akbar's ancestors, it turns out, were connected in various ways with Niccolò Machiavelli and Sandro Botticelli and Amerigo Vespucci. Did these connections actually happen? How about the court intrigues: were there any parallels to them in the real Ottoman Empire? There's material enough in the historical bits alone to fuel research for years; Rushdie himself must have spent years just on that part. It's great fun.

Then there's the meta part of The Enchantress of Florence -- the part that deals with the power of storytelling itself. We learn early on, for instance, that Akbar has brought a queen into existence using only his mind. His force of will is such that she becomes real, and the city eventually sees her as well. When Akbar leaves on a military campaign, he returns to hear his queen relate what has gone on in his absence. He makes love with his imaginary queen. This idea recurs throughout The Enchantress of Florence, but again: never enough to get in the way of the story itself, which is magical without being fantasy.

The Enchantress of Florence is a treasure.

This was my first Salman Rushdie book, and BOY, has it been difficult to neatly summarize for a review! I've sat down countless times over the past couple weeks and just frozen up. So, please forgive the eclectic nature of my review.

On one level, "The Enchantress of Florence" is a historical novel with wonderful information about 16th Century Hindustan (India) and Florence, Italy. On another level, there is the story itself, chock full of characters and their back-stories, and those characters' respective adventures. This layered story interweaves, back and forth across time and place. On still another level, this a platform for a fictionalized Akbar the Great to ponder the deep questions of humanity: a politically powerful man portrayed as being on the cusp of intellectual greatness as well.

There are a great many themes and juxtapositions in this book. Here are a few:
* The confluence of differing histories, philosophies and belief systems (e.g. between East and West);
* Power: political power versus the power of belief;
* The power of belief as a political/historical force: if you believe in something strongly enough, it has the force of reality; it is self-determining; especially in the realm of politics;
* Force and prudence: one of the characters of this book is a fictional Niccolo Machiavelli, who in real history wrote philosophical treatises on political power, particularly espousing the idea of a balance of force versus prudence to successfully rule. The upshot is the employment of this idea: "the ends justifying the means";
* Legend versus history: e.g. "magical realism"; also: what really happened way back when?; can we ever truly know?;
* Women: what kind of power do women have in a patriarchal culture, or any culture, for that matter? Sexual? Intellectual? What do men really want from women? Loyal wife? Plaything? Intellectual equal?;
* Who creates whom? Do we create ourselves, or are we created by others? What factors play into those things?

"The Enchantress of Florence" is very like a huge colorful tapestry: look in the upper right corner and there is a story of ancient Hindustan. Look: bottom left, a picture of 16th Century Florence. Look: there is Akbar the Great... And over there, Niccolo Machiavelli. That one female figure hiding behind a column, sometimes clearly seen, other times faded, seems to be saying something. The women in this tapestry, all of them at its center: so many of them are indescribably beautiful. All the male heads woven ito this picture, from the great of leaders, to the lowliest of servants, are all turned towards them. Looking at this tapestry, it's hard at times to know what is real and what isn't. There are strange workings just under the surface; unexplainable phenomena. In the end, is it just a story? My eyes wander all over this tapestry; there is a lot to see here.

Akbar's complex characterization carries the story. He is characterized as a man who, in his kingdom, tries to reconcile all men, regardless of religion or status. He entertains the incredible idea that discord and difference might actually be a force for good, rather than ill; an idea that coming from a king is very unusual. In one scene he is slicing up a foe, in the next he is contemplating deep things. One moment he questions his identity as a god-like ruler; later in the book he wonders about women, imagining into being his "perfect" woman. This he does at the expense of interest in his "real" wives. Later he is awakened to an undeniable and disturbing allure of an unconventional, self-determinate woman. Akbar's mind cannot be boxed; he is standing on an isthmus between ignorance and enlightenment. Ultimately, however, he realizes that his philosophy is as temporary as life itself: alive only as long as he is.

In its scale (though not in length) "The Enchantress of Florence" is reminiscent of "Don Quixote" or "The Brothers Karamazov". It is unusual for me to read a modern novel that is irreverent with timeline and theme. But like those earlier masterworks, this is a welcome part of the journey. A book with so many layers is one that keeps its reader thinking about it long after the last word is processed.

Rushdie's brand of magical realism has the odd quality of simultaneously engaging you in a narrative you think should be interesting and distancing you from that very narrative. Told like a fairy tale, the tone constantly reminds you that you are reading, and that reading is an artificiality. However, ever mindful of the artifice, the reader then constantly wonders, what purpose then did the maker have in mind? Thus, along the way of this entertwined story, we begin to pay close attention to the asides discussing the way of kings, the place of lying, the role of religion, the truth of power. Like the religious pilgrim, it's no good mindlessly entering the temple and going through the motions. You, dear reader, must work out the value of journey.

When I first started this book, I was enthralled. The writing was poetic, adventursome, and exciting. Literary images abounded. Toward the middle of the book, however, the structure (or the reader) unraveled. New characters were continually introduced in a confusing way and the timing of the plot became circular - leading to some confusion in terms of place and sequence. Repitition and slowness took over, resulting in a final impression of disappointment.

The relationship between the sexes over time and across civilizations is a unifying theme of this broad historical novel and philosophical exploration of the role of the individual within his society. Opening in the court of Akbar the Great, head of the Mughal Empire, Rushdie's latest novel moves back and forth between Mughal India, the Florence of the Medicis, and the Turkish court of the Ottoman Empire. Eventually, his characters even look toward a new land, recently discovered and named by Amerigo Vespucci, a cousin of one of the main characters. Though the novel is complex in its structure and sometimes challenging with its swirling time frame, Rushdie keeps his tone relatively playful, filling the novel with the fantastic, even as he is also depicting violent battles, internecine intrigues, and bloodshed. As always, his prose style is breath-taking, and the questions he raises are thought-provoking.

A yellow-haired stranger wearing a coat of many colors becomes the main storyteller when he arrives at Akbar's court and claims that he is blood kin to the royal family. His tale of his family history, filled with legends about Akbar's family, keep him alive so that he can ingratiate himself with the king, to whom he wishes to present a letter supposedly from Queen Elizabeth. This plot merges with that of Florence when some of the characters mentioned in the Mughal section become main characters in the Florentine section. Three friends, Ago Vespucci, Niccolo "il Machia," and Nino Argalia experience different kinds of lives under different kinds of rulers, a theme that Rushdie ties to that of the individual's search for identity within society.

Throughout the novel, the male characters are sometimes literally bewitched by beautiful women, whom they often idealize to the point that they create new, imaginary characters whom they see as real, including the beautiful, but imaginary, Mughal Queen. One of her distant relatives, "The Enchantress of Florence," known also as Qara Koz, Angelica, and Lady Black Eyes, has lived in the Mughal Empire, Ottoman Turkey, and Florence, a woman who has bewitched every male who comes into contact with her. She, however, just wants to "become what I have it in me to be," and it is she who is supposed to be the mother of the yellow-haired stranger, though she would have been sixty when he was born, perhaps magically.

The novel, while playful and often humorous, has a monumental scope, dealing with three civilizations, many characters with multiple names, complex historical connections shown through vividly depicted wars, elements of fantasy and magic, and movement back and forth in time, as the yellow-haired storyteller tells his story and gets interrupted by his listener(s). This can sometimes be off-putting for the reader, preventing the reader from identifying with characters and instead forcing him/her to be an interpreter of what is happening as the story moves off in many directions at once. The puns, wordplay, and delightful jokes in a novel like The Moor's Last Sigh, for example, are not an important part of this novel, in which the author seems to stand apart, leaving the reader on his/her own. n Mary Whipple

Midnight's Children: A Novel
Shalimar the Clown: A Novel
The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel
The Satanic Verses: A Novel

If you are afraid of reading Rushdie, as many people are -- perhaps concerned he will be too difficult -- don't start here. Read The Ground Beneath Her Feet, or Shalimar the Clown. They are better introductions.

The Enchantress of Florence is a book for those already held in Rushdie's sway. These are the readers who are prepared to pick away the inessential threads until they find the tapestry. The tapestry itself is marvelous, and more than worth the effort.

My full review of The Enchantress is at maryonbooks dot blogspot dot com

Sir Salman Rushdie, best known for The Satanic Verses which earned him multiple death threats forcing him to leave his native land and live in Britain, returns with what he calls his "most researched book" which took "years and years of reading," in The Enchantress of Florence. A remarkable novel told in a way that mixes story with history and fable, making it seem like an enchanting tale á la Thousand and One Nights that leaves one wondering which parts of it are true and which are from the imaginative mind of Rushdie. An enigmatic character from distant Florence pays a visit to the Mughal emperor Akbar the Great. Through Rushdie's eyes we see two very difference worlds: the high renaissance of Italy juxtaposed with that of India. The magic in this story is indirect and subtle, lending it a romantic and fantastic air that simply adds to the setting and plot. It is Salman Rushdie at his best, telling wonderful, moving, magical stories within stories.

Originally written on January 18th 2009 ©Alex C. Telander.

Originally published in the Sacramento Book Review.

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Rushdie excels at creating complex imaginative plots, but his Achilles heel will be his ability to engage the reader through the increasingly convoluted twists and turns of his ambitious narratives.

The novel started out with great promise - the portrait of Akbar is masterful, the concept of Jodha as an imaginary princess is quite something. Even Rushdie's minor flourishes like the Rana of "Cooch Naheen" tickled me pink.

By the time we get to Florence, the narrative starts to lose momentum. Too many loose ends. Too little story, too much self-aggrandizing prose.

I simply couldn't finish this book.

I love Rushdie's other stories, but for me this one dragged. Within the first chapters, the characters seemed already a typical stereotype, with too much attention to physical description. That said, I usually love detailed description, but for a purpose. The only purpose here seemed to be one of demonstrating Rushdie's advanced vocabulary. I missed voice, authentic dialogue, and the unique and magical storytelling I have come to expect from this author. In short, this seemed a cardboard cut-out tale that I've read before, with less interesting characters. As a result, I was bored, longing for a book with soul and wonder, rather than cynicism about magic. There is a magic to a good story, but not here.

Obviously very well written. Descriptions are vivid; language is beautiful (in places). Loved the historical side of this, but sometimes got very lost in the fantasy. A number of times I had to go back and reread as I just wasn't sure of what was happening.

Still, it kept me interested. I'm just not sure that that type of literature is my cup of tea. Love historical fiction, but want to keep it real.

The book reads like a poem. There is a beautiful rising and falling of sounds which form magical sentences. Lost in the fairy tale quality of the prose you can be jolted by finding a sentence concluded in contemporary vernacular in perfect meter.

Into the first 5 chapters I was spellbound. In Chapter 6 the story seems to get lost in itself. While I still loved the prose, I no longer cared about the characters. I think that paring away some of the extra plots and cameo characters would improve the book. Some of the baudy comments and scenes work, others like the superflouous plots, could be edited out.

Rushdie writes of big themes such as on power, government and men and women. Some are beautifully stated but the story moves so quickly that you can't digest them.

The literary style is reminiscent of Garcia Marquez and the weaving of history reminiscent of Gore Vidal.

There is a volume of short stories scattered throughout this novel; and a shorter novel waiting to be released.

They clutter the main story line, and hide the deeper ideas that Rushdie is exploring of the role of religion, democracy and the value of benevolent dictatorship.

The short stories are a manufacture of fairy tails writ large, with all the exaggeration and flowery language of a persian fairy tale, and none of the economy or closure of the Scandinavian type. So in the end it is like watching antelope in the Serengeti from the window of a slow moving train. They numb the brain, one loses track of all the characters flitting in and out, but (worse still) midway through the book nothing seems grounded anymore and the words become a blur.

There is a lot of story woven into the histories of the Great Khan, Tamerlane, the Medici, Machiavelli, blah blah blah, it's all too much.

Running as twin interwoven threads, and in a far more accessible prose, are the story of the Enchantress, and the musing that Rushdie places into the mouths of his thought leaders, especially the Emperor and his musing on the dichotomy of his own immortality coupled to the Godhead he represents.

Halfway through the book I stopped with the fairy tales & historical trivia and addressed myself only to Rushdie's Purpose. Then I returned to the rest, which I was then able to lift out as a set of complete short stories that enlarged on and gave context to the Purpose. Without the distraction of the fluff, I was able to deal with the ideas. Without the ideas, I was able to enjoy the fairy tales and History lessons: all of which are well researched and well (though flippantly, almost charicature-isticaly) represented.

Western tales with Eastern characters (Qara Köz - "Kara Göz" in Turkish spelling, "Lady Black Eyes") meet Eastern tales of Western characters (the yellow haired European traveller -- a la Marco Polo). The plot follows Silk Road, and sometimes goes as slow as a camel. The language is pretty impressive though.

If you liked Eco's The Island of the Day Before and Pamuk's My Name Is Red, you will also like this book.

Agreeing with most Rushdie fans, this is one of those on par with The Ground Beneath Her Feet and Fury- novels that follow Rushdie's own trying and chaotic times in life. The novel feels distracted, like it's author- but it still carried wonderful and elegant themes throughout, and was entertaining.

While the prose often reaches poetic heights, the book is also riddled with wince-inducing cliches and assorted infelicitous phrases. Pointlessly crude eroticiscm makes it unsuitable for mature readers of any age.

Worse yet, the attempts at east-meets-west syncretism are gratingly callow. Rather than offering new insights into age-old conflicts between tradition and reform, religion and secularism, Rushdie eschews the intellectual heavy lifting in favor of a light touch or, less charitably, a fashionably detached pose. Mr. Sammler's Planet this ain't!

Overall, a dismayingly sloppy and self-absorbed work by a famous author who quite clearly did not give his writing a critically needed second (or third or fourth) look before having it printed.

I am certain that Rushdie is a brilliant writer. But this book was pretentious and empty of any real feeling. The story was a crashing bore, and it could have been quite fascinating, so I was disappointed. It was all I could do to finish it. The sexuality and eroticism is full of cliched thinking in both the men and women. Like an adolescent who is repeating things he heard but never experienced. The speech was uniformly pompous. As a result it conveyed little or no nuance. Except for an occasional brilliant insight! The best parts of the book were the opening paragraphs in each chapter. This was my first Rushdie read. I am not discouraged because his imaginative and ornate writing is truly fun. But do not start here with Rushdie.

Having read a few of Salman Rushdie's previous novels, I was looking very forward to diving into his new book. I'm happy to say I was not disappointed. This breathtaking story interweaves the lives of various individuals from Akbar's empire in India to Macchiaveli and the ruling Medici of Florence. The sheer vastness and complexity of the storyline is perplexing at times, but is smoothed out as the story progresses and loose ends tie up.

As usual, the prose is absolutely exquisite, with subtle jokes and musings abound. Rushdie's ruminations about politics, love, sex, religion, and the meaning of life are lucidly expounded. His ability to convey the motivations and desires of his characters make them all the more real, amid the phantasmagorical landscape and sinuous storyline. A delight to read.

Highly recommended.

This mesmerizing novel, even more charming, entertaining and thought-provoking than his Booker-winning "Midnight's Children", dazzles like a genuine gem. Written in prose so indescribably beautiful and absorbing that I found myself holding my breath involuntarily countless number of times, this book will most certainly elevate Rushdie's well earned lofty place in the literary world even higher.

This novel is not one long story; rather, it is a marvelous narration and compilation of several stories, each bewitching in its own way. On the surface, it is the story of a handsome, golden haired man named Mogor dell'Amore (Mughal of Love), who claims that he is a descendant of Emperor Akbar's grandfather's youngest sister, a princess of great beauty, the Mughal princess Qaara Koz. Also, this novel is partly based on history, the rest is a combination of fable, fantasy, and Rushdie's florid imagination: the great Mughal Emperor of India, Akbar, and his sons are historic; but the golden haired enchantress of Florence, I think, is a product of Rushdie's imagination or fantasy. The novel can also be read as a story about the clash of two civilizations: The Mughal Empire in the East, and the "empire" of the Medicis and Machiavelli of Florence in the West. This book can be called novel only in a broad sense; to call it an epic, perhaps, would be more appropriate.

Very rarely do readers get an opportunity to read prose as lovely and grand and mesmerizing as Rushdie's prose in this book. The cumulative effect of reading lovely passages on top of dazzling passages will surely overwhelm the reader: "Fires began to burn in the twilight, like warnings. From the black bowl of the sky came the answering fires of the stars. As if the earth and the heavens were armies preparing for battle, he thought. As if their encampments lie quiet at night and await the war of the day to come." This book reminded me of Rudyard Kipling's "Kim"; it is written in the same grand style.

Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" was considered a monumental work, and it was a commercial success too, and after winning the Booker prize in 1981, it went on to win the "Booker of Bookers" award (the best Booker prize) - Booker's twenty-fifth anniversary prize. And it is the leading contender for the Booker's fortieth anniversary prize also. The "Enchantress of Florence" is so grand that it will win, I think, the Booker prize next year. I have no doubt that this book is Rushdie's finest work.

I really enjoyed most of the story, however, as salmon said, this is his most researched work. I actually thought all his cross referencing and mentions of real people tended to be annoying. Saying hausebank of howei nowie was a rice eater, and not saying anything more was actually just boring. Then at other times i was so hooked into the main plot and really eager to see where the story goes.
This was the first book I've read by the author, pretty good.

I was immediately drawn in by the narrative of "The Enchantress of Florence" and, while it didn't always hold me in rapt attention, I was generally enchanted by the imagination, wit, wisdom, and splendid evocation of a certain time and place when the boundary between what is real and what is imagined was fluid. I found my background in Ottoman and South Asian history and literature enriched my reading of this book. Without that background, I may have found it less enjoyable.

This novel is certainly worth the read for any serious reader who is looking for a short interim of "lighter, easier reading" without the lack of the dynamic depth and satisfying complexity of tone, diction, and overall plot that satisfies the mental appetite. The novel spans a veneer across a large fragment of the world and acheives something that few novels ever do: it gracefully touches everything with more than sufficient depth, rather than very little with just enough depth; thus The Enchantress of Florence can be thought of as a shorter and quicker War and Peace. So for readers looking for a change from the likes of Jane Austen and Nathaniel Hawthorne, I recommend this very quick read for a delightful state of ecstasy without the oral mitsubishi (I anticipate only a few of you may know what I'm talking about with that last bit). This truly is a 21st century Count of Monte Cristo (though obviously quite a bit shorter and thus not as permanent in bliss and remembrance).

Oh and as a sidenote, NPR did a delightful podcast with Sir Salman Rushdie himself giving a little preview of the novel, and I recommend anyone check it out. He also does a little Q&A that is quite informative.

Big disappointment. The flourishes of the writing cannot compensate for the utter lack of structure and somewhat superficial character development. A flop. A self-indulgent flop to me more precise. In terms of moving through history and inserting it seamlessly into the narrative with great panache, sorry but he is no Umberto Eco.

This entire novel is haunted by a sly, gentle account of Botticelli's muse, at the center of two of the loveliest paintings in Florence, La Primavera and The Birth of Venus, and the shadowy relationship between Machiavelli and the Medicis is humanely teased out in a totally fresh way. Author of The Prince, he's brought to life as more than an intellectual thug. The portrait of his wife is off-kilter, funny and sad, and the account of his own torture, imprisonment and exile is brilliantly melancholic. The Enchantress herself, for too long not much more than a rumor in the narrative, finally metamorphoses into an emotionally powerful, genuinely seductive creation. The ability to move and to be darkly memorable even in the midst of massive narrative high camp, makes it is easy to see why this strange tragicomic cocktail of a form appealed to its creator - not the strange Mughal of Love, of course, but Rushdie himself. Novelists, unlike the courtesans prancing with careful abandon on almost every page of the work, are, after all, not meant to rely on just a handful of practised tricks. While it seems churlish to expect a writer to find a form and stick to it, nonetheless it's testament to the powers of the teller to find yourself now and again hankering for some of the more familiar magic.

Picked it up this summer for a backpacking trip around Europe. While in Prague I spent more time reading in my hostel than I did touring the city - it was that good. I would say the beginning is a little slow as far as the plot development goes, but the writing style is great throughout.

Things I love about reading a Rushdie novel:

1. I have to keep a dictionary to hand.
2. I have to set it down in my lap time and time again to bury my face in my hands with giggling. And then reread, repeat.
3. Or shake my head, and wish I had such a grasp of language.
4. And wit
5. And intellect

His books are for people who know how to pay attention. If you can, you reap the rewards. His narrative is meandering and flowery, but that is what I adore. His writing always takes me to places of wonder, pain, amusement, awe and appreciation. This book is no exception. Rushdie is a literary genius.

When I read, I fervently hope to be overcome with thought, beauty, history and by the power of an writer's words. In short, all I ask is . . . beloved author, bedazzle me!

Salman Rushdie has dazzled promiscuously with this, his exalted, effete, and gorgeous new work, "The Enchantress of Florence." The last time I was similarly stupefied by sheer talent, veracity and yes, beauty was when I chanced upon Orhan Pamuk's gifted works.

True, there is an astonishing confabulation in "The Enchantress of Florence" but then, this is adamant, consummate storytelling by a great master . . . an author who is loathe to assume that his readers do not quite have the needed references. Bravo! - Writing up to one's readers is the mark of a generous author. And what alacrity of style!

Immobilized and consumed as I was by this book, I was delighted and well, dazzled. I did not find my credulity stretched by the incredible knitting of Mughal India with Medici Florence. In fact, the juxtaposition of East-West was deliriously stimulating. "Enchantress" literally drips with color, scent and florid civilization.

The opening description of the Golden Lake scene makes wonderful allusions to the transient fluidity of power, signified in the person of the Grand Mughal Akbar, a potentate of such extraordinary majesty that readers are invited to contemplate the experience of "apex" and its actual realization within a self-conscious dynasty, whether it be Mughal, Ottoman, Medici. . .or "Other"

Alas, I am sad to say, the book ended . . .as must all epics and great ages. Highly recommended. (Write on, Mr Rushdie!)

Nobody writes better prose than Rushdie, and while this is not as much of a crowd pleaser as some of his earlier ripping yarns, fans will be in awe of how divinely inspired this novel seems to be. He makes it look effortless. Every paragraph is epic. Forget the destination and just enjoy the journey.

Terrific! The Enchantress is enchanting. You will be carried away with the sense of reality and fiction as they combine with desire, memories, witchcraft, sensuality, love and war lords to produce the perfect companion when anchored in a favorite cove or sailing the Mediterranean. It has all the right qualities like a good Country Western Song with pickups, jail, girlfriends, exwives, and mother-in-law (sorry Salman!).

Loved the connections between the ancient nomatics of the Mid East and the notables of Italian history in this flight of fantasy set in the time of discovery of New Lands. Ancient myths, woven together with the thread of humor and irony kept me rooted to the scenes. Some may find this a difficult read but it is Salman Rushdie, you know; involving the use of the readers' mind is his forte.

I looked forward to reading Mr. Rushdie's latest novel, but with a bit of trepidation. His books have never been an easy read for me, as his artful if somewhat flowery prose often distracts me from the story line. I often find myself foundering in the complexities of his words at the expense of other elements of the story. Generally I have to read and reread to begin to fully appreciate all the varied and wonderful aspects of each tale. My efforts have always been rewarded, though, by a wonderful story replete with interesting characters, and a satisfying sense that my mind has been enriched by the reading.

Unfortunately, this book did not deliver the cohesive, fascinating story I am used to from this author. Try as I might I could not really follow the story, which seemed to rely primarily upon the story-teller within the main story to provide the forward movement. While I enjoyed this at first, I found it increasingly irritating, as even the story-teller wove a multi-dimensional tale that wended its way throughout the main story jumping from one timeframe to another, one group of characters to another. The result for me at the end of many hours of reading was a feeling of complete disconnectedness from the story, even though I found portions of it enthralling enough.

The writing as always was beautiful and wonderful in its own way. I found portions of the book to be fascinating and enjoyable, but overall the work involved to make my way through the book was disheartening. I have read the reviews of others who seem to think that this book was really just a series of short stories or vignettes that the author may or may not have intended to stand on their own. Maybe this is true, but I believe that there are ideas and forces at work here that are much deeper. I just wish I knew what they were.

I may try reading this book again. Or maybe I need a study guide?

The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel
While the lyrical language in Salman Rushdie's latest novel is erudite and beautiful, the story line is incredibly hard to follow. Character's names change, as do the plot locations. Terminology from multiple languages are included. Sentences go on for a quarter page. In short, the reader can easily get lost in a sea of beautiful language.

I read this book for my long-running book club -- a group of people who are normally very conscientious about completing the books we select. None of us finished this one because we just couldn't slog through it. Too bad, because it's pretty to read -- just incomprehensible.

I would like to rate Rushdie's "Enchantress" five stars, but I prefer to save that for the best of the best. Anyway, Salman Rushdie is a god of literature. His ability to weave these stories together to make such an "enchanting" novel is impossible to describe. I agree that partially through it is challenging to follow so many characters, name confusions, and time stops. But very rewarding in the end as you understand the way it all comes together. I loved this book.

This book is just too complicated and confusing with its imaginary characters mixed with historical ones and many plots. As a result this is neither a good historical fiction nor a fantasy. It leaves the reader dissapointed, and simply fails to deliver. The first part of the book (it is composed of three) is the most interesting one, reading the last two is simply a waist of time.
In addition, the author depicts women as creatures whose strength and significance is only as great as the men's desire to posses them. The female characters described in the book are nothing more than tools which men use to entertain themselves. As soon as the men's attraction towards a women disapears, she disapears herself (Jodha). In this book the author does not depict the strength and power of women. If anything, he depicts the weakness and helplesness of men towards their own desires.

Sir Salman Rushdie - appointed a Knight Bachelor for services to literature in June 2007 - is probably most famous for his book The Satanic Verses, published in September 1988. The controversy in the Islamic world over what was seen as an irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad, caused a fatwa to be proclaimed, requiring Rushdie's execution, and a bounty offered for his death. An attempt on his life was made in 1989, but the bomb exploded prematurely, missing Rushdie, but killing the terrorist who has since become a martyr, "the first to die on a mission to kill Salman Rushdie".

Since then, Rushdie has lived under police protection in the UK, something which added fuel to the diplomatic fire and causing the UK and Iran to break diplomatic relations, firebombing of bookstores around the world, huge public rallies at which Muslims burned his books, people associated with translating or publishing his books being attacked, seriously injured and even killed. In 1998, diplomatic relations were restored, but the Iranian government gave a public commitment that it would "neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie" and the fatwa still remains. Apparently Rushdie still receives a "sort of Valentine's card" from Iran each year letting him know the country has not forgotten its vow to kill him.

In spite of all this, Salman Rushdie continues to live well in the UK, with his works being well acclaimed and, in 2006, he became Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Emory University faculty for one month a year until 2010. He is known for his encouragement to young Indian writers, his strong political stand and the role of religion in society, conflicts between faiths and between the religious and those of no faith. He has married four times and is about to divorce his fourth wife.

His latest book, Enchantress of Florence is set in the Mughal Empire and renaissance Italy, and written in the rather florid style of "magical realism", something which I personally find difficult to understand. It reminded me over again of the Arabian Nights and wondrous tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sinbad rolled into one. In this book, a European stranger travels to the court of the Grand Mughal, and tells a tale that becomes the obsession of all who live in the city. It's a tale of enchantment and sorcery, Sultans, princes and princesses, empires and armies. And quite frankly, it lost me completely. However, that's not to say the writing isn't wonderfully descriptive with mosaic-like detail in a magic-carpet kind of way. If you get my drift. I actually find the story of the author more interesting. He even had a cameo appearance in the film Bridget Jones's Diary.

I have been following Rushdie's work for years now, including reading such misfires as Fury and The Ground Beneath her Feet, because the gems like Satanic Verses, Midnight's Children, and the Moor's Last Sigh (and possibly Shalimar the Clown) were just so brilliant and so unmissable.

This book, unfortunately, is the worst Mr. Rushdie has written. Has he decided to try less hard now that he is well-ensconced in his role as a celebrity? The Enchantress of Florence recycles much that Rushdie has done better in previous novels. Conceits familiar from other Rushdie novels get trotted out and here they creak rather than sparkle: the nested story, the series of paintings that tell a story about the storyteller/painter, the character poised to translate across cultures and geographies, etc. etc. This is Rushdie by numbers. Nothing very impressive happens here at the level of narrative form, character development, atmosphere, or philosophical reflection.

The novel feels laden with with its own self-congratulatory prose, and it sputters on for far too long. I've read The Moor's Last Sigh and Satanic Verses (much longer novels) in a couple of sittings, but this one felt interminable. When the scene shifts from India to Italy, we are suddenly introduced to a whole new set of characters, after having worked so hard to try to care about the stick figures we had already come to identify (but not know). The logic of picaresque takes over very quickly, which would be great if done with panache, but is simply irritating here because the usual Rushdian excess rings hollow. The master of the superlative has lost his touch here, and everything is either the "most beautiful," "The greatest," or exists "in all the world." As the story came to a close I felt cheated by its banal conclusions: storytelling creates our world and it is an endeavor that is dangerous and priceless in equal measure. Oh, and sectarian thinking is bad, global embrace of multiple cultures is good. But most importantly, in spite of himself, Rushdie communicates to us that our magical realist wizard has run out of spells, and we can see the handkerchiefs tucked up his sleeve before he dazzles himself with them. Give this one a swerve.

Since this book was released in India first, I had a chance to read it in the fervent hope that it gave us back the Rushdie we lost with "Shalimar the Clown". The good news is that this book is gorgeously written. The bad news is that the 'story' is at best a collection of interesting vignettes with no real purpose, and that the entire enterprise is so overblown that it has no option but to collapse under its' own weight.

Leave it to Rushdie to get too eloquent for his own good. If you are into long, beautifully written sentences that can last an entire page (seriously), then this will appeal to you. After the first thirty pages, one is left wondering if the author is somehow intent upon proving his own literary ability, with scant respect for the readers' tolerance levels of 'well written prose'. He toed the line earlier in "Midnight's Children" (which I still think is grossly overrated) and in "The Moor's Last Sigh" (which is bizarrely underrated despite its meandering narrative), but in "The Enchantress of Florence" we find Rushdie making a full-on attempt to be taken seriously as the "world's greatest living writer". The attempt is desperate, at best, but also strangely pathetic. Why would he need to prove to us that he can write? His own fascination for his mastery of the written word, and indeed the English language, is a bit bizarre, considering he is one author who doesn't need to feel insecure about these things.

That aside, the story is one convoluted mess. Towards the middle of the book, I was reminded of Elizabeth Kostova's "The Historian" (which was another insipid, yet wholly superior work in comparison to this). That was a book that was blatantly commercial (re-embracing the vampire genre, etc), but it also lost its way in its' unending quest to become 'serious', with ten page long passages of twelfth century's monks 'secret diaries', etc. This sort of syndrome is present in spades in Rushdie's novel - which suffers both because of its' pretension and its absolute lack of coherent plot.

The plot, if we may, sounds simple - The novel opens with the arrival of a mysterious European at Mughal Akbar's exotic and sophisticated court. The emperor is fascinated with the stranger and his tall tales, although he suspects that the storyteller is also a trickster. To be fair, the 'stranger' sounds totally out of place in the century he is supposed to be in, and acts as if he's stepped out of the 2008 version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. His know-it-all attitude and grotesquely long descriptive passages will test even the most patient reader.

While I did like the geographical transitions between the Mughal Court and Renaissance Florence, I was often reminded of that age-old adage - "All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go". The European Visitor in this book calls himself "Mogor dell'Amore," the Mughal of Love. And the 'Enchantress' is a beauty who is a master in the realms of witchcraft and sorcery. Put these elements together, and we should have gotten a fantastic fable that would work wonderfully as a film adaptation. At the very least it should have stimulated some philosophical discussion. With this book in the hands of Salman Rushdie however, the sum of the parts is as bleak and uninteresting as the individual parts themselves - while there is some spark here and there (Check out the self-indulgent prose from pages sixty two to ninety), nothing really works.

Heres the thing - Indian writing in English is often a 'genre' in itself, but Rushdie has often been the posterboy for the entire Indian-English movement. This book is a mystery - it should have been a short story but for some reason Rushdie thought it was interesting to make into a full-fledged novel. It does not work. The lengthy passages devoted to the 'look of the boudoir' and the 'beauty of the Mughal Architecture' severely tested my capacity for loquacious prose. In fact, this book far outdoes those notoriously long descriptive passages in A.S.Byatt's "Possession".

"The Enchantress of Florence" is not recommendable simply because Rushdie is either suffering the aftershock of the Padma Lakshmi effect and is queasy about his own writing ability - either that, or hes totally lost his talent for storytelling. With this sort of talent, he should perhaps invest in writing political essays and such? As a novel, this simply does not cut the mustard. Three very generous stars - two of them for the past memory of Rushdie's works.

I appreciate SR's ability to interweave poetry and prose so well in the first half of the book. But this is two (or three) stories that he tried to jam together and just doesn't work.

He's always had his own very unique style, but his talent doesn't save him here. Hopefully he'll do better next time.

I heard Rushdie speak about the Enchantress of Florence at the New York Public Library before I read his book. I thought others might like to do the same. You can watch the event for free here:

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This book held my interest for the first half with hard to put down characters, an interesting plot and beautiful descriptions of place. Then a tangle of characters was thrown in without any seeming relationship to the first half of the story. The lineage of these characters was so convoluted, disconnected and obscure that only the most ardent supercomputer would dare try to keep them straight. At this point the book hit the recycle bin. This guy may be a great writer but he could sure use an editor.

woe are we, when such a gifted writer demeans himself with sophmoric tripe such as this new novel from salaman rushdie.it appears that mr rushdie feels more than a little envy for J K Rowlings merchandising juggernaut, and has decide to cast his lot in on the childrens fantasy sweepstakes. i sincerely hope he finds his way back to cultured (multi-cultured)writing with adult themes...