Salman Rushdie, the Booker Prize Winner and one of the best Indian Writers based in England and well known for his controversial ‘Satanic Versus’, has released his latest novel, ‘The Enchantress Of Florence’ .
The novel is based on historical background, with a number of years of research on history and travel, than any other novel that he has written so far.
To know the real calibre and the capacity of Salman Rushdie, as a writer, one should know his total collections from the beginning of his writing career. His novels include Grimus (1975)(Science Fiction),Midnight’s Children,(1981),(won the Booker Prize, 1981 and the Booker of Bookers in 1993),Shame (1983),The Jaguar Smile :A Nicaraguan Journey (1987),The Satanic Verses (1988),Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990),Imaginary Homelands (1992),East,West (1994),The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995),The Ground Beneath Her feet(1999),Fury (2001),Step Across this Line (2002)(Collected Non-Fiction),Shalimar the Clown (2005) and the latest The Enchantress of Florence (2008)
In his latest novel, ‘The Enchanters of Florence’ Salman Rushdie mixes history, fantasy, fable and magic to create a novel of great enchantment.The novel which he describes as his most researched, moves with astonishing speed and energy from the court of Emperor Akbar to Renaissance Florence in Europe journeying through various destinations on the way. Rusdie pits East against the west explores assimilation and identity and invites us to think about the power of story telling and its role in defeating obscurantism and intolerance.
The book is centred around a visit of a European to Akbar’s court, who claims that he is a long –lost relative of the emperor, born of a Mughal princess who was exiled from India to eventually fall in love with an Italian, who is connected to the Turks and the city of Florence. It provides the basis for a tale that moves back and forth between countries and continents as it engages with the cultural and philosophical ideas of that time.