In the day's last light the glowing lake below the -palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold. the child's world, the ancestral, pre-scientific world, where we are all emperors or enchantresses, making up the rules as we go along.'

Le Guin wrote that the book exists in 'the land of story. In a rave review in The Guardian, author Ursula K. Rushdie's shimmering - and occasionally precious - characters range from a spying eunuch to a clutch of giant albino Swiss mercenaries to real-life contemporary figures, including Machiavelli, Botticelli and Vlad the Impaler.īut The Enchantress of Florence is perhaps most of all a novel about women and the men who live with them, lust for them and define themselves by their fantasies about them. A possible descendent of Kubla Khan, she seems to exist solely to steal men's hearts. The many-tiered narrative spins around the world, following a roguish Florentine traveler to the 16th century Mughal court of Akbar the Great and a gorgeous, black-eyed princess. It's a lush Renaissance imagining of that dreamlike city so beloved by novelists, but it's also a story about East and West.

Salman Rushdie's new novel, The Enchantress of Florence, has been hailed by critics as a novel of glamour and power. Each week, we present leading authors of fiction and nonfiction as they read from and discuss their work.

The enchantress of florence