Enchantress of Florence - Softcover

Rushdie, Salman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099421925 ISBN 13: 9780099421924

Publisher: Vintage Books USA, 2008

Synopsis

Discover this magnificent magical novel from the Booker-prize winning author of Midnight''s Children.

When a young European traveller arrives at Sikri, the court of Mughal Emperor Akbar, the tale he spins brings the whole imperial capital to the brink of obsession. He calls himself ''Mogor dell''Amore'', the Mughal of Love, and claims to be the son of a lost princess, whose name and very existence has been erased from the country''s history: Qara Köz, or ''Lady Black Eyes''.

Lady Black Eyes is a fabled beauty believed to possess great powers of enchantment and sorcery. After a series of abductions by besotted warlords, she finds herself carried to Machiavellian Florence. In her attempts to command her own destiny in a world ruled by men, Lady Black Eyes brings together the two great cities of sensual Florence and hedonistic Sikri, so far apart and yet so alike, and two worlds become dangerously entwined.

''Vintage Rushdie...reminds us, in case we may have forgotten, that he can tell a story ...better than anyone else in the language'' Sunday Telegraph

About this title

Review

Amazon Best of the Month, June 2008: Trying to describe a Salman Rushdie novel is like trying to describe music to someone who has never heard it--you can fumble with a plot summary but you won't be able to convey the wonder of his dazzling prose or the imaginative complexity of his vision. At its heart, The Enchantress of Florence is about the power of story--whether it is the imagined life of a Mughal queen, or the devastating secret held by a silver-tongued Florentine. Make no mistake, it is Rushdie who is the true "enchanter" of this story, conjuring readers into his gilded fairy tale from the very first sentence: "In the day's last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold." At once bawdy, gorgeous, gory, and hilarious, The Enchantress of Florence is a study in contradiction, highlighted in its barbarian philosopher-king who detests his bloodthirsty heritage even while he carries it out. Full of rich sentences running nearly the length of a page, Rushdie's 10th novel blends fact and fable into a challenging but satisfying read. --Daphne Durham

About the Author

Sir Salman Rushdie has received many awards for his writing, including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. 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. In June 2007 he received a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage Books USA
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0099421925
• ISBN 13: 9780099421924
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 455