The result is an enlightening arabesque that confirms why Rushdie is Rushdie, and his belittlers far littler. Rushdie provides it here by embedding Akbar in complex cross-cultural encounters between Europe and the East in the 16th century, a time when modern forms of power and empire occupied astute observers in both. Novels that rise above genre conventions, however, require the author’s own legerdemain. The reason Rushdie cares so much perhaps comes to this: “Globalization didn’t start yesterday, and neither did tolerance.” In making his chief protagonist here Akbar the Great (1542-1605), the Mughal emperor famed for openness to all religions, Rushdie plainly found a historical figure who challenged and inspired him. Rushdie adds an understandably proud note: “This is not a complete list of the works I consulted.” Without doubt, he’s told an interviewer The Enchantress of Florence is his “most researched” novel ever. Dubreton-Lucas, and Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, by Ruby Lal. If the novelist is Salman Rushdie, the answer to question one is, “Plenty”/ Consult that 93-item bibliography at the back of his 10th novel, citing academic tomes such as Daily Life in Florence in the Time of the Medici, by J. What does a thoroughly modern, Manhattan-based novelist - not commonly associated with historical novels set centuries ago - know about Mughal India and Renaissance Florence?

The enchantress of florence themes