occasion a novel receives harsh treatment from critics not based on the actual work, but rather because it is not what the critics want it to be this then is the only explanation I can find to explain the harsh, often shrill, reviews received by Rushdie's equisite "The Enchantress of Florence.
" Having read several of these negative assessments I find the same subtext runs through them all, namely the complaint that "Enchantress" is neither Rushdie's masterwork "Midnight's Children" nor that lesser work for which he became broadly famous or in other circles infamous "The Satanic Verses.
" To be sure, "Enchantress" is a far different book than Rushdie's previous work, less meditative and more fantastical, yet what is the problem with a great writer branching out into new genres and worlds While I have loved several of his earlier work, for his choice to create the extraordinary world of "Enchantress" I celebrate Rushdie's genius and thank him for giving me what I can only describe as an extraordinary read.
Other reviewers have offered excellent plot synopsis of "The Enchantress of Florence" and therefore I will offer only the briefest details of the story lines.
A blond haired stranger, calling himself Mogor del'Amore the Mughal of Love appears in the quasimagical city of Akbar, the Mughal King of Kings.
The stranger claims to be the descendant of Akbar's grandfather's lost younger sister, carried into captivity earlier, He regales Akbar with the tale of the "lost princess" and how she journeyed across Eurasia and found herself eventually in the city of Florence.
Overtime a horde of historical personages make appearances, some major, others less so, such as members of the Medici family and Machiavelli.
The story itself is so rich with detail that on occasion the reader feels as if they have been a guest at a feast.
One constantly questions which details are true and which are products of Rushdie's extraordinary imagination, Interestingly, Rushdie spent years researching this work and in interviews claims that much of what one might think the most fantastical the Shi'a monarch who uses his enemy's skull as a drinking goblet or the Ottoman Caliph who's gardeners double as his executioners are in fact the ones that are true.
On occasion on really wishes that there were a study guide to go along with the book,
Like the best fairy tales, Rushdie's "Enchantress" layers in many deep and vexing questions that transcend any age: What does it mean to be real What is the good life How can one be happy All of this arrives in a story written with such incomparable talent, that one can not easily put it down.
"The Enchantress of Florence" may not have been the work that the critics wanted Rushdie to write, but I have little doubt that in generations to come, readers will recognize it as among his greatest works.
While every review seems a need to state the basic plot of the yellowhaired stranger appearing in Akbar's court I will quickly skip over this and go straight to what I thought.
I felt that the book was very uneven, there where parts that were just wonderful and deserving a full five, in particular the
story of the illuminator who disappeared into his own artwork and the concept of Jhoda, and others that were so very boring that the average became a two.
The main problem I had was that it was a very slow read due to the fact that at times it felt like a history book not surprising considering Rushdie's backgroundand had so much historical detail crammed in that I felt I really needed a who's who guide and lots of maps just to fingure out what was going on.
Also the ending was a bit rushed and vague, and a bit ewwwww with the incest,
I also had the opportunity to go to his book talk and signing for this book and I have to say that he did a wonderful job actually summing things up and I feel that his talk added alot to the book, laying out more clearly what the historical situation was like during the time of Akbar, and maybe if that had been infused into the book then I wouldn't have felt quite so lost sometimes.
As a neophyte of Salman Rushdie's work, I was not fully prepared for The Enchantress of Florence, although I should have been.
Rushdie possesses an uncanny ability to manipulate perspective, In his stories, the flow of time is always questionable, and subject to changeif it flows at all, And his characters are largerthanlife, capricious archetypes that embody the virtues and flaws of humanity,
In this novel, Rushdie runs two stories parallel to each other: that of Emperor Akbar's court, the emperor's life and philosophy and the story of a man's heritage, of a lost Mughal princess who travels from Asia to Florence to the New World, then beyond.
The boundaries between these two storiesthe latter of which takes place in the first one's pastare flimsy, permeable, If you were expecting a linear narrative that reads like a movie novelization, then you a have not read Salman Rushdie before and b will not get that.
I might even characterize this story as a fable, for it carries that particular brand of enchantment about it.
Romance, yes, that too: the main characters all mediate on the nature of love at one point or another.
Cloaked in sixteenthcentury philosophical ideas, these ruminations may seem pompous or boring, but I found them intriguing, Akbar struggles with the existence of God, the divine right to rule, whether might truly is the only arbiter of power.
We also see a fictionalized Machiavelli, disenchanted with his wife, and like so many men in this story, drawn into the web of enchantment that the eponymous princess weaves.
Descend deeper through these layers, and Rushdie focuses on the nature of power for women in a world dominated by men.
How do women exert their influence Is their beauty, their sexuality, the only way they can ever gain power In this book, two female characters are essentially imaginary, constructed from the mind of Akbar.
What does this say about the nature of gender, a man creating his feminine opposites because he cannot find them in life
Rushdie uses this story as a vehicle to explore a woman's lifetold largely through the perspectives of men, ironicallyin this period of history.
However, I wouldn't necessarily call this a work of historical fiction, in the sense that it does not concern itself too much with the details of history except when they serve a purpose.
The story is not about the Mughal empire so much as it is set, for a part, in that empire.
While "epic" or "sword and sorcery" fantasy has its place, its success of late has typecasted the genre.
In those stories, magic is almost a science, subjected to laws the way we have restricted gravity, We often forget that the definition of fantasy is broader, In this respect, The Enchantress of Florence reminds me of sitelinkJonathan Strange Mr, Norrell. It is truly a fantastic adventure and romance just steeped in unrestrained magic, a world in which anything is possiblebut not everything is permitted.
Floransa Büyücüsü takip edilmesi zor bir kitap, Hikaye içinde hikaye olan, çok sesli, çok katmanlı, birden fazla merkezi olan,, ve. yy'ı çerçevesinde gelişen tarihsel olayları dönemlerin getirdiği inançlar,duygular ve kaygılar içerisinde gerçeklik gerçeküstülük kavramlarını modern roman yapısı içinde sunuyor.
Rushdie'nin dönemlerin linear olmayan anlatımı içinde doğu batı karşılaştırması bilindik ve kulağa tanıdık gelebilecek öykülere karşı getirmiş olduğu dualist bakış açısını da beraber getiriyor.
Kitap her ne kadar sadece masalsı ya da büyüsel gerçekliği kullandığını okura düşündürse de, üst metin açısından, gerçekliğin keşfini arayan ve bunu masalsı öğelerle son derece zekice bir araya getiren çok başarılı bir kitap.
Sonuç olarak, bu çok katmanlılık ve çokseslilik bazen yorabiliyor, Her şeye rağmen Rushdie'nin romancı olarak dili ve olayları zenginleştirmesine sadece hayranlık duyuyorsunuz,
İyi okumalar,
/Welcome to realm where Story reigns, courtesy of the master of ceremony Salman Rushdie.
In a somptuous palace of red stone dwells the absolute ruler of the world, the great Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great warrior, philosopher, despot and lover.
A setting worthy of the Arabian Nights, and according to those tenets here comes a traveler / conartist / magician calling himself the Mughal of Love, He will have to redeem his life like Scheherezade through stories : improbable stories, fantastic stories, epic stories, outright lies, stories embedded within stories.
The Emperor will either heap gold on his head or throw him from the highest tower,
"If there is a knower of tongues here, fetch him
There's a stranger in the city
And he has many things to say.
Mirza Ghalib, translated by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi"
Salman Rushdie has done his research extremely well: Both Fatehpur Sikri and Florence come alive in multicolored landscapes, vibrant with life and symbolism.
Nicollo Machiavelli, Andrea Doria, the Medici and the Vespucci families, Akbar and his Nine Jewels are all historical figures.
Even my local hero Vlad the Impaler has a couple of pages, I am reminded of the extraordinary movie "The Fall" and indeed some of the locations, the unreliable narrator and the fantastic coincidences of fate can be found there.
It is easy to check with Wikipedia and find out that most of the facts presented here are true.
Yet the world inhabited by the characters is not the one to be found in history books, The proponents of the "magical realism" school claim that reality is subjective, it is recreated daily through our imagination.
It is stated more than once in this text:
"All our certainties are being blown away and we must live in Gulbadan's universe of mystery and doubt"
"Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough"
"She had sailed away into unreality, into a world of fantasy which men were still dreaming into being"
The book is one of a breed that requires attention and patience on the part of the reader.
I took my time with it, returning and reading again and again some paragraphs, The plot takes sometimes second place, but here it is taster in the words of the storyteller:
"And in the end the princess reached Italy in the company of a mighty warrior.
Argalia and Angelica were their names, Argalia bore enchanted weapons, and in his retinue were four terrifying giants, and by his side rode Angelica, the princess of Cathay and India, the most beautiful woman in the world, and an enchantress beyond compare.
"
From Agra to Samarkhand, Istanbul to Genoa and Florence this is a fantastic voyage that I do not regret taking.
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