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Nov 14, 2008

jordan rated it:

On 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 sub-text runs through them all, namely the complaint that "Enchantress" is neither Rushdie's masterwork "Midn More...

6 comments like (35 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2011

Scott rated it:

Filled with lush emptiness. There is more love-at-first-sight in the Enchantress than all other stories put together. Entire cities fall in love at first sight. And the level of subtlety rarely rises above this. After a promising first 80 pages or so, it begins to resemble a cartoon (in a bad way). Even the blasphemies in this book—-which seemed to be produced by Rushdie perfunctorily, like a band that always makes sure to play its most popular song—-are wooden and innocuous.

It’s to More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jul 20, 2008

Elizabeth (Miss Eliza) rated it:

While every review seems a need to state the basic plot of the yellow-haired 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 stars, 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 ha More...

2 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jul 13, 2008

Ben rated it:

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 change--if it flows at all. And his characters are larger-than-life, 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 More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Dec 23, 2011

Nile daughter rated it:

My first read for Rushdie …well , I was confused how to rate this book . This does not mean that I hardly liked it.No ,it is just that there were parts deserved 5 starts for me while other parts simply irritated me!!! still ...I do recommend it , and I highly appreciate the work that has been done in this novel, I totally understand the declaration that it took him years to write this one .Even as reader he pushed me searching and thirsty for more about the subject!

"the ench More...

14 comments like (5 people liked it)

Sep 01, 2008

Christa rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

5 comments like (6 people liked it)

Apr 22, 2008

Nancy rated it:

Rushdie has this particular trait that I've noticed in his writing: he writes entertainingly, but the reader cannot simply sit back and be entertained. This book was no exception.

In one sense, I felt like Shahryar waiting for Scherezade to continue her tale. Every time I'd put the book down and come back to it, there was always something new, and something to look forward to. There's not just one story here, but several, and each one is intricately layered so that the reader has More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jul 17, 2008

Lori rated it:

Reading this is like eating a bowl of creamy ice cream. Luscious words that seem to slide down and enervate but tastefully lingers to remind you it's not as light as you first thought. Reading Rushdie is like a spark of recognition with a fellow traveler and I tip my hat in greeting, to say hello! it was lovely walking with you for awhile, thank you for reminding me what it is to connect with someone, hope to bump into you again further down the road, and may you have a good journey.

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jan 19, 2009

Jesse rated it:

this is the first book i have read by rushdie and it's good enough to encourage me to read "midnight's children" which i hear is his best book. if anyone has any suggestions as to something besides that, i'm open for some advice. this book was fairly entertaining, but it seemed to get wrapped up in itself and stumbled to the finish, rushing through the most important part of the plot in about 20 pgs, while spending the previous 270 pgs, slowly spinning an east meets west orientalist ya More...

11 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 21, 2008

Tina. rated it:

Well, Rushdie can pretty much do no wrong by me. So, yes, five stars. He's just so good.
I hope I don't have to wait another three years for his new creation.

6 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 10, 2009

Brian rated it:

It's hard for me to "review" a Rushdie novel, mainly because of the feeling I get each time I finish a particular text. It's difficult to describe, but perhaps analogy will shed some light.

I recall the first time I walked through the Pulitzer Foundation in St. Louis. Designed by Tadao Ando, the building is jarring at first. Entirely concrete, it initially screams heartless modernism. But then you see the Ellsworth Kelly piece running the length of the concrete stairway. An More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Feb 26, 2009

Alan rated it:

Salman Rushdie is in top form in this historical novel set in Mughal India and in Renaissance Florence. A mysterious Italian shows up at the court of the Mughal Emperor claiming to be his relation. How could this be? He has yellow hair and pale skin. Slowly the story unfolds.
Rushdie creates a dreamlike atmosphere in which magic can and occasional does happen but more often humans make their own choices and accept their own fates. It's a meditation on the nature of love, of imagination, of More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 18, 2009

Bruce rated it:

I have yet to be disappointed by any of Salman Rushdie’s novels, and The Enchantress of Florence proved to be no exception. Rushdie’s language is wonderful, his metaphors sensual and evocative (the novel’s opening sentence is, “In the day’s last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold.”), his vocabulary delightful (“…[he:] move[d:] toward his goal indirectly, with many detours and divagations.”), his images rollicking with creativity (“The visionary, revela More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 11, 2009

Jon rated it:

What a wonderful book. A vast series of Arabian Nights tales, all linked, but with tantalizingly fluid chronology and meaning, with some rock-hard realistic sections in the Florence of the Medicis, although now that I think of it, those had plenty of enchantment too. The book is divided into a number of chapters, each titled on a separate initial page by its first few words. Some of them: "In the day's last light the glowing lake" "At dawn the haunting sandstone palaces" " More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 25, 2009

Sandybanks rated it:

This story has all the ingredients that should make it wonderful : Akbar, one of the most intriguing of Mughal emperors and his mysterious Fatehpur Sikri, Renaissance Florence in all its colorful glory under the Medicis, Machiavelli, Jannisarries, grim Ottoman sultans, epic battles, and even a murder or two. But somehow all these elements fail to gel into a cohesive story. The exotic locales and historical figures are ably rendered in lush, sometimes breathless prose, but they lack character tha More...

7 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 02, 2008

Ruth rated it:

good yarn.

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 08, 2011

Bonnie rated it:

I'm surprised with the hatred I feel towards this book. I mean, it's Salman frickin' Rushdie, right? Isn't he some kind of literary god? I'm going to have to read his other books to see, because this one was trash.

I've read sexist books before. There are plenty of them out there, but usually I can glide over the sexist bits because overall the plot/characters/writing are good enough that I choose to ignore the fact that the women are horribly written (looking at you, Robert Jordan). More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 26, 2008

Tony rated it:

Rushdie, Salman. THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE. (2008). **. It’s obvious that I’m not Rushdie’s targeted reader. This is a book of marvels, but not a marvelous book. It’s the story of a travelling salesman who journeys from Florence to India to the Mughal ruler Akbar’s court at Sikri (near Agra, and which I visited during my time in India). He supposedly has a “tale which only the emperor’s ear may hear.” The rest of the book provides the tale – a long, drawn-out series of marvels that dem More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 22, 2008

Lisa (OhThatLisa) rated it:

This is Rushdie for the masses. Rushdie for people who are too intimidated to read Midnight's Children or The Satanic Verses. Rushdie-lite is what I'll call it.

The Enchantress of Florence is a book about fairy-tales, fantasy, myth, mirages, and illusion. Highly appropriate subject matter considering that the book itself is not much more than a pretty chimera. Feather soft and lighter than air, Rushdie weaves the story in and out of Florence, Italy and The Mughal Empire, skippin More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 28, 2008

Nori rated it:

I love, love Rushdie's writing style. An excerpt from this appeared as a short story in the New Yorker a few months before the book was published, and just that passage about the emperor's deliberations on the meaning and usage of the first person singular vs. plural (not to mention the exertions and verbiage of the Chief Flatterer) reminded me just what I'd loved about Haroun & The Sea Of Stories.

This is a lovely one, a cute story involving generations and continents and benign pas More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 27, 2008

Manu rated it:

While the lyrical fanaticism in praise of new literary upstarts has led some to sardonically emphasize the Sir in Sir Salman Rushdie (and assert his cultural whiteness to boot!), it is with books such as these that the much maligned author asserts his belief in the persistence of difference in even the most syncretic themes.

In so doing, while the author cannot silence his critics (indeed, that would be furtherest from his mind), he does succeed in reminding readers of a possibility wh More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

May 15, 2008

Meri rated it:

Another classic from an incomparable author! The Enchantress of Florence tells the story of Akbar, a Mughal emperor, who meets a traveler from Florence who claims to be his relative. As is typical with Rushdie's books, the plot is only the novel's skeleton, and the story weaves myth, history, and philosophy to open dialogue on the mingling of Eastern and Western culture, their differences, and what their histories tell us about our world today. It is set in the Florence and India of our colle More...

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Oct 14, 2011

Julia rated it:

"No princípio, eram três amigos: Antonino Argalia, Niccolò 'il Macchia' e Ago Vespucci. O mundo de sua meninice era uma floresta mágica. Então - Niccolò concluiu - depois de longos anos de feitos traiçoeiros contra seu país e seu Deus, que condenaram sua alma ao Inferno e fizeram seu corpo digno da roda de suplício, Argália, o paxá - Arcalia, Arqalia, al - Ghaliya, até seu nome se tornou uma mentira - voltou ao que não era mais seu lar."
Depois de ler Os Versos Satânicos e apreciar More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 11, 2008

Leae rated it:

I never got into this very well, It's not my type of story. I didn't appreciate how sexual it was, it seemed in the first half of the book there was too much swearing and whoreing around.
The second half of the book dropped the swearing and whores for a decent story thet was filled with philisophic pondering that to me never resolved into a colnclusion. Also I didn't like the end.
As far as the style he did a good job of blending fatastical reality and mythical history. I was never More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 02, 2008

Brad rated it:

A gorgeous, luscious narrative about a woman so beautiful that men cannot help but be captivated and consumed by her; a prose so heavy and rich, so lucid with beauty itself, that it is worthy of Qara Koz, the black eyed enchantress; and a cast of characters so bizarre and rich that the time spent with them during this delightful read doesn't seem to be nearly enough, Rushdie has achieved another success worthy of his honored name. Fantastic.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 20, 2011

Pearl rated it:

This book actually deserves a four most of the way but the ending was a disappointment. I love all of Rushdie books; with the magic and the surrealism, and the clever storytelling usually mixed with some sick sexual acts. While this book has all of that, it is more parody of Rushdie than him at his best. The ending was no twist at all but makes incest seem just trite. Nothing was flushed out to the fullest, making the book seem just a very long short story. Still a good story though, just n More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 06, 2011

Martin added it

Rushdie is a storyteller, and he has, once again, returned to tell a story about telling a story. But as his readers know, more important that the simple story line are the different layers to a story - and the question which is which. And of course the language, the poetry, the fabric out of which a storyteller weaves his very own world.
Very well, but what about this novel, now? Well: It's again a book like a story-teller's tale on a summer night at the campfire. It may not be my all-time favo More...

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Mar 04, 2009

Marci rated it:

Of course, Salman Rushdie’s latest book is a pleasure. He is a beautiful, lyrical writer with a magnificent imagination and a global interest in culture and history. "The Enchantress of Florence" reflects his skill. I enjoyed hanging around the Mughal Emperor Akbar’s court, much endowed by Rushdie’s romantic fantasies, as the story of the mysterious Florentine visitor unfolded. Yes, East and West intersected back in the 16th century in ways which we mostly forget about, and the metapho More...

0 comments like

Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

The Washington Post sums up general sentiment: If one can overlook its flaws, The Enchantress of Florence is "so delightful an homage to Renaissance magic and wonder." Rushdie combines his trademark mix of fantasy and reality in his exploration of East and West, power, love, loyalty, religion, humanism, and imagination. While many critics described the writing as sensual, evocative, and dreamy, and the portraits��Niccol�� Machiavelli, Savonarola, and the Medicis��as intriguing, other

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Jan 11, 2009

Flash rated it:

Salman Rushdie is often best known for his novel The Satanic Verses: A Novel.What many don’t know, however, is that he does magical realism in a way that is often not encountered in today’s fiction. The Enchantress of Florence: A Novelis at once a tale of Renaissance Italy, India, and most of the seas in between. It is a story of travelers, magical princesses, and the richness of desire and love. Deeply philosophical and profoundly lonely, The Enchantress of Florence: A Novelis bound to be one o More...

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