The Enchantress of Florence - by Salman Rushdie (Paperback)

About the Book

"The Enchantress of Florence" is the story of a woman attempting to command her own destiny in a man's world. Vivid, gripping, and profoundly moving, this dazzling book is by one of the world's most important living writers.

Book Synopsis

The Enchantress of Florence is the story of a mysterious woman, a great beauty believed to possess the powers of enchantment and sorcery, attempting to command her own destiny in a man's world. It is the story of two cities at the height of their powers-the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant emperor 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. 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 Quotes

"A baroque whirlwind of a narrative . . . [Rushdie helps] us escape from the present into a dreamlike past that ultimately makes us more aware of the dangers and illusions of our everyday lives."--Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune

"Brilliant . . . Rushdie's sumptuous mixture of history and fable is magnificent."--Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian (London)

"For Rushdie, as for the artists he writes about, the pen is a magician's wand. . . . One of his best [novels]."--John Sutherland, Financial Times

"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 . . . Rushdie ushers in a caravan of low, laughable characters in the service of his weighty and witty observations on religion, politics, sex, war, art, philosophy, and science in an East-West world of white mischief and black magic, of enigmatic nightmares and inscrutable dreams."--Elle

"Beyond its magical razzle-dazzle lays a work of steely contemporary resonance, rich in slyly metafictional allusions."--Hephzibah Anderson, Bloomberg News

"A mesmerizing tale . . . a feat of narrative wizardry: a playful, ruminative, vibrant meditation on subjects that never bore--power, sex, love, travel, doubt."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"As ever, Rushdie's verbal profusions war with his love of straight-up storytelling. The reader wins."--Time

"About the inner lives of royals, he proves as sharp as Helen Mirren in The Queen. . . . Rushdie's brightest ideas have always concerned belonging, travel, and exile, and here he shapes them into a shimmering tale about the deep sweetness of home."--Entertainment Weekly

"The Enchantress of Florence is a luxuriant triumph. . . . This is Rushdie's ongoing, illuminating conversation with readers about our world and our place in it. . . . The story ends, our thirst remains."--New Statesman

"Salman Rushdie's ebullient historical novel manifests both his dexterous erudition and his bawdy wit."--The Atlantic

About the Author

Salman Rushdie is the author of fourteen previous novels, including Midnight's Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor's Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; a collection of stories, East, West; a memoir, Joseph Anton; a work of reportage, The Jaguar Smile; and three collections of essays, most recently Languages of Truth. His many awards include the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, which he won twice; the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award; the National Arts Award; the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature; the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature; and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. He is a former president of PEN America. His books have been translated into over forty languages.