The enchantress of florence-Salman Rushdie

Enchantress of Florence is a book about Qara Koz,the youngest sister of Babar,the grand father of Akbar the great,in whose time the book is set.The book is about men,women,courtesans,wars,beliefs,queens,princes,princesses ,art,architecture,magic,tales etc of the then Europe and Asia.without going too deep into the book(and thus making this review a spoiler) ,i will try to talk about the book as a whole.

“In the beginning there were three friends,Niccolo ‘il Machia’,Agostino Vespucci and Antonino Argalia.’ And Argalia the turk,takes the descendant of Timur the lame as a left over of war.She and her servant mirror(who is a reflection of her) are brought to Florence after he leaves the land of the Turks behind.Here the Enchantress as she comes to be known,changes the lives of the people of Florence with her magic,until one day the duke is killed.The witch hunter are brought in,but she escapes.Fast forward into the ‘present’ and “a tall yellow-haired young European traveller calling himself ‘Mogor dell’Amore’,the Mughal of love,arrives at the court of the Great Mughal,the emperor Akbar”(from the book).he claims himself to be a relative of Akbar and he tells the Shahnshah about his mother.the tale carries itself ,with the jewels,the role of women in guarding tales and the lust of men.

The book has a lot of history to it and links the various events across Europe and Asia.In the last part it also touches upon the “mundus novus”(America).The book is quite rich in description of the various thing in that era.It also ‘touches’ upon ‘fucking'(sorry i tried not to use the word,but then when the author uses it so many times,it has to come in the review somewhere) .If you have the patience to read a book,which frankly could be written in fewer words,then this is a nice read.it didn’t get boring though and in a few places I was rolling in laughter because of the absurdity in the way which a few things were described( and the author leads you to believe in them too).this is the first time i picked up a Rushdie and i was surprised by it.All in all,if you have the time give it a read.

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