The Enchantress of Florence

“A baroque whirlwind of a narrative . . . [Rushdie helps] us escape from the present into a dreamlike past that ultimately makes us more aware of the dangers and illusions of our everyday lives.”—Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune

“Brilliant . . . Rushdie’s sumptuous mixture of history and fable is magnificent.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian (London)

“For Rushdie, as for the artists he writes about, the pen is a magician’s wand. . . . One of his best [novels].”—John Sutherland, Financial Times

“A beguiling, incandescent tale of travel, treachery, and transformation set in the Renaissance Florence of Machiavelli and the Medicis and in India’s Mughal Empire . . . Rushdie ushers in a caravan of low, laughable characters in the service of his weighty and witty observations on religion, politics, sex, war, art, philosophy, and science in an East–West world of white mischief and black magic, of enigmatic nightmares and inscrutable dreams.”—Elle

“Beyond its magical razzle-dazzle lays a work of steely contemporary resonance, rich in slyly metafictional allusions.”—Hephzibah Anderson, Bloomberg News
 
“A mesmerizing tale . . . a feat of narrative wizardry: a playful, ruminative, vibrant meditation on subjects that never bore—power, sex, love, travel, doubt.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“As ever, Rushdie’s verbal profusions war with his love of straight-up storytelling. The reader wins.”—Time

“About the inner lives of royals, he proves as sharp as Helen Mirren in The Queen. . . . Rushdie’s brightest ideas have always concerned belonging, travel, and exile, and here he shapes them into a shimmering tale about the deep sweetness of home.”—Entertainment Weekly
 
“The Enchantress of Florence is a luxuriant triumph. . . . This is Rushdie’s ongoing, illuminating conversation with readers about our world and our place in it. . . . The story ends, our thirst remains.”—New Statesman

“Salman Rushdie’s ebullient historical novel manifests both his dexterous erudition and his bawdy wit.”—The Atlantic