Customer Reviews

The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel (Hardcover)

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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.

The Enchantress of Florence begins with a mysterious yellow-haired stranger standing astride a bullock cart as he enters the domain of the emperor of India. He is godlike in stance, yet in appearance he is as a fool with his "overly pretty face" and parti-colored coat. The city to which he arrives is one of the grand cities of the world in both scale and wealth. Even the nearby lake seems to be made of gold. This of course is just an illusion brought about by the setting of the sun, but is an appropriate introduction to the story since it will become difficult to separate the real from the imagined as the story progresses.

The yellow-haired man is a teller of stories and he has arrived to tell a story to the Mughal of India that will either bring him fortune or cost him his life. This young man has represented himself to the Emperor Akbar as an emissary of Queen Elizabeth I. The emperor challenges the stranger's identity and would dismiss him except the yellow-haired man, who calls himself first Uccello of Florence and then Mogor dell'Amore (mogul of love), begins to weave the enchanting story of Qara Koz, the enchantress of Florence, who he claims is his mother.

But what is the Emperor to make of the stranger's story? What are we to make of the story we are reading? Identities and reality are not always clear within this magical novel. Who is the story-telling stranger? Is Qara Koz really the stranger's mother? Even the Emperor is not sure if he is simply an "I" like everyone else or a "we" of divine royalty. Reality is tenuous. Characters are imagined yet given "space" and relationship. Painters disappear into their own paintings. The story-teller feels himself fading away to nothingness when kept from telling his story. Is he merely defined by his story and without it has no existence? To add to the tenuous atmosphere created by questions of identity and reality, women are sometimes mere echoes and mirrors of someone or something else. They whisper and murmur and are ghostlike as they glide behind curtains and veils.

The author has woven layers of story around his readers, and enchants and draws us into his creation. We would come back night after night, for 1001 nights, to hear the story he has to tell. He shows us that story has power ... the power to enthrall, the power to rend apart and the power to create.

The Enchantress of Florence is first and foremost a story. It is secondarily an affirmation of the power of story. I found that I had to let go and allow Rushdie to take me where he would in order to fully enjoy this work. My criticism is limited to passages that seemed unnecessary and clumsy (e.g. the potato witches) and I wonder if the author wasn't too anxious to use as much of his extensive research as possible. The appended bibliography of works consulted is quite impressive and I look forward to reading from that list in order to expand my understanding of those historical elements that went right over my head.

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 didn'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 that Salman Rushdie was going to be one of the many winning authours that would never make to my reading pile. But something about "The Enchantress of Florence" beckoned, and I decided to give it a go. And I'm truly glad that I did. What an exceptionally enthralling and compelling read "The Enchantress of Florence" turned out to be.

The Mughal Emperor, Akbar, is ready for a diversion away from the woes of family and ruling a vast nation, when a mysterious yellow-haired stranger arrives at his court in Fatepur Sikri, claiming to be an ambassador from England. The stranger has many tales to tell about the distant European city of Florence, and the enchantress from the East that enraptured the people of Florence with her beauty and grace, and soon everyone in Sikri is enthralled by the young storyteller's tales. But will these stories prove the undoing of the court, and will Akbar's growing affection for the storyteller cause even more strife amongst his family?

When I was a child, my mother used to subscribe to an Indian magazine for women that had recipes, articles, sewing tips and vignettes about Akbar and his wise advisor Birbal. Reading "The Enchantress of Florence" transported me back to those wonderful carefree days. Constructed somewhat like "The Arabian Nights," with the mysterious stranger playing the part of Scherazade, "The Enchantress of Florence" is a series of short stories that follows the supposed adventures of Qara Koz, a grandaunt of Akbar's, and that of her greatest love, the mercenary general, Argalia. Many of the stories are based on 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.

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.

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.

I have been an admirer of Rushdie's work and have read and enjoyed a number of his books, including Midnight's Children, the Moor's Last Sigh, Shalimar the Clown. I started this book with a sense of optimism and initially found it engaging. However, as I went farther and farther, it just seemed to unravel. It wasn't so much that there were too many characters and story lines spinning by, but that I no longer knew or cared about any of them. I'm usually determined to finish a book I've started, but about 2/3 of the way through this one I just gave up. I still have no idea what it was about.

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.

On occasion a novel receives harsh treatment from critics not based on the actual work, but rather because it is not what the critics want it to be; this then is the only explanation I can find to explain the harsh, often shrill, reviews received by Rushdie's equisite "The Enchantress of Florence." Having read several of these negative assessments I find the same sub-text runs through them all, namely the complaint that "Enchantress" is neither Rushdie's masterwork "Midnight's Children" nor that lesser work for which he became broadly famous - or in other circles infamous - "The Satanic Verses." To be sure, "Enchantress" is a far different book than Rushdie's previous work, less meditative and more fantastical, yet what is the problem with a great writer branching out into new genres and worlds? While I have loved several of his earlier work, for his choice to create the extraordinary world of "Enchantress" I celebrate Rushdie's genius and thank him for giving me what I can only describe as an extraordinary read.

Other reviewers have offered excellent plot synopsis of "The Enchantress of Florence" and therefore I will offer only the briefest details of the story lines. A blond haired stranger, calling himself Mogor del'Amore (the Mughal of Love) appears in the quasi-magical city of Akbar, the Mughal King of Kings. The stranger claims to be the descendant of Akbar's grandfather's lost younger sister, carried into captivity earlier. He regales Akbar with the tale of the "lost princess" and how she journeyed across Eurasia and found herself eventually in the city of Florence. Overtime a horde of historical personages make appearances, some major, others less so, such as members of the Medici family and Machiavelli.

The story itself is so rich with detail that on occasion the reader feels as if they have been a guest at a feast. One constantly questions which details are true and which are products of Rushdie's extraordinary imagination. Interestingly, Rushdie spent years researching this work and in interviews claims that much of what one might think the most fantastical - the Shi'a monarch who uses his enemy's skull as a drinking goblet or the Ottoman Caliph who's gardeners double as his executioners - are in fact the ones that are true. On occasion on really wishes that there were a study guide to go along with the book.

Like the best fairy tales, Rushdie's "Enchantress" layers in many deep and vexing questions that transcend any age: What does it mean to be real? What is the good life? How can one be happy? All of this arrives in a story written with such incomparable talent, that one can not easily put it down. "The Enchantress of Florence" may not have been the work that the critics wanted Rushdie to write, but I have little doubt that in generations to come, readers will recognize it as among his greatest works.

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.