The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel
by Salman Rushdie
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Book Summary Information
Author: Salman RushdieEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2009-01-06
ISBN: 0679640517
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780679640516
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Book Reviews of The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel
Book Review: Uneven
Summary: 3 Stars
While the prose often reaches poetic heights, the book is also riddled with wince-inducing cliches and assorted infelicitous phrases. Pointlessly crude eroticiscm makes it unsuitable for mature readers of any age.
Worse yet, the attempts at east-meets-west syncretism are gratingly callow. Rather than offering new insights into age-old conflicts between tradition and reform, religion and secularism, Rushdie eschews the intellectual heavy lifting in favor of a light touch or, less charitably, a fashionably detached pose. Mr. Sammler's Planet this ain't!
Overall, a dismayingly sloppy and self-absorbed work by a famous author who quite clearly did not give his writing a critically needed second (or third or fourth) look before having it printed.
Summary of The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel
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 Niccol? 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.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
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