The Enchantress of Florence opens at dusk, with the arrival of a thirsty blond European traveler at the court of the Emperor Akbar. It is late in the 15th Century and the beautiful stranger, dressed in an unusual leather multi-pocketed patchwork coat, has come to tell the Emperor a magical, compelling story. It’s an auspicious beginning and beautifully wrought, full of characterisation created partly by setting, and the kind of sensory overload that Rushdie has become known for.
As always, Rushdie manages to go beyond the here and now into a world full of synthesesia: smells, sights, sensations, longing, hunger, fear, colour, place and emotion mingling until there’s almost too much for the reader to take in. Clearly there were rich pickings for Rushdie in Akbar's wealthy Mughal world, where the man known as the "greatest of the Mughal emperors" commanded more than simply his subjects. In The Enchantress of Florence Akbar's imagination and power are so great that he can conjure a queen out of nothing and raise the dead. His musings on life, his kingdoms, the responsibilities of leadership, and even the nature of migration are powerfully thought-provoking:
Was foreignness itself a thing to be embraced as a revitalizing force bestowing bounty and success upon its adherents, or did it adulterate something essential in the individual and the society as a whole, did it initiate a process of decay which would end in an alienated, inauthentic death? (403)
In many ways, The Enchantress of Florence is a story about the story: a metafiction that looks at the line between invention and reality and crosses it. It may seem like a magical fairy tale, but psychologically, invention is behind most of our reality. We are all locked, to a certain extent, in our own perceptions, so the man or women we love is always partly determined by how we’ve created them in our own minds. History too, is never entirely factual. There are always imaginings, templates, perspectives, and shades that can never be black or white. This is the notion that Rushdie plays with in The Enchantress of Florence, and like many modern novelists, he does it in the guise of historical fiction, rather than the other way around. The invention drives the research and the facts, so that it’s innate truths about love, power, fear, and desire that push the story forward, rather than the research behind the real Akbar.
Article comments
1 - Jennie Stewart
An over-blown sense of his ability to tell a story turns Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence into tedious read. I agree with the above crit. : a firm edit would have saved this novel and perhaps given it a bit of poignancy. As it is, it reads like a self indulgent diatribe.
2 - chanchal
It is really a wonderful novel... the description of akbar's court and his society is superb .. mixing the indian history with east is good..