Monday, August 10, 2009
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie .
A tall, yellow-haired young European traveller calling himself 'Mogor dell'Amore', the Mughal of Love, arrives at the court of the real Grand Mughal, the Emperor Akbar, with a tale to tell that begins to obsess the whole imperial capital. The stranger claims to be the child of a lost Mughal princess: Qara Koz, 'Lady Black Eyes', a great beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery, who becomes the lover of Argalia, a Florentine soldier. But is Mogor's story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess?
I bought this book because I enjoyed 2 other books written by Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses and Shalimar the Clown . The first impression I got from reading this 443 page novel is that Salman's writing goes up a league compared to other authors because of his writing style and extensive vocabulary. This story of a thief and con-man is told with a great sense of history and perspective that makes most adults appear to talk like 5 year olds. Salman is very good with words as he tells this story set in Hindustan during the dark ages.
I so much wanted this book to work for me but sadly it failed and I vote this book a MISS. This novel fails as a story as it lacks structure and rolls back and forth through time. This story did not inspire me, it is not a good mystery but a childish fairy tale told with adult words. It does not give me what I want from a book and I found it disappointing. In this book Salman is good with words but poor with story-telling. It does however, have a good ending, which I will not spoil for you. The story finishes really well and I will leave you with a quote from page 440 - this will not spoil the book for anyone but illustrates what good prose Salman can write...
But once he was gone, all he had thought, all he had worked to make, his philosophy and way of being, all that would evaporate like water. The future would not be what he hoped for, but a dry hostile antagonistic place where people would survive as best they could and hate their neighbours and smash their places of worship and kill one another once again in the renewed heat of the great quarrel he had sought to end for ever, the quarrel over God. In the future it was harshness, not civilization, that would rule.
A tall, yellow-haired young European traveller calling himself 'Mogor dell'Amore', the Mughal of Love, arrives at the court of the real Grand Mughal, the Emperor Akbar, with a tale to tell that begins to obsess the whole imperial capital. The stranger claims to be the child of a lost Mughal princess: Qara Koz, 'Lady Black Eyes', a great beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery, who becomes the lover of Argalia, a Florentine soldier. But is Mogor's story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess?
I bought this book because I enjoyed 2 other books written by Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses and Shalimar the Clown . The first impression I got from reading this 443 page novel is that Salman's writing goes up a league compared to other authors because of his writing style and extensive vocabulary. This story of a thief and con-man is told with a great sense of history and perspective that makes most adults appear to talk like 5 year olds. Salman is very good with words as he tells this story set in Hindustan during the dark ages.
I so much wanted this book to work for me but sadly it failed and I vote this book a MISS. This novel fails as a story as it lacks structure and rolls back and forth through time. This story did not inspire me, it is not a good mystery but a childish fairy tale told with adult words. It does not give me what I want from a book and I found it disappointing. In this book Salman is good with words but poor with story-telling. It does however, have a good ending, which I will not spoil for you. The story finishes really well and I will leave you with a quote from page 440 - this will not spoil the book for anyone but illustrates what good prose Salman can write...
But once he was gone, all he had thought, all he had worked to make, his philosophy and way of being, all that would evaporate like water. The future would not be what he hoped for, but a dry hostile antagonistic place where people would survive as best they could and hate their neighbours and smash their places of worship and kill one another once again in the renewed heat of the great quarrel he had sought to end for ever, the quarrel over God. In the future it was harshness, not civilization, that would rule.
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