A tall, yellow-haired, young European traveler calling
himself “Mogor dell’Amore,” the Mughal of Love, arrives at
the court of the Emperor Akbar, lord of the great Mughal
empire, with a tale to tell that begins to obsess the
imperial capital, a tale about a mysterious woman, a great
beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and
sorcery, and her impossible journey to the far-off city of
Florence.
The Enchantress of Florence is the story of a woman
attempting to command her own destiny in a man’s world. It
is the story of two cities, unknown to each other, at the
height of their powers–the hedonistic Mughal capital, in
which the brilliant Akbar the Great wrestles daily with
questions of belief, desire, and the treachery of his sons,
and the equally sensual city of Florence during the High
Renaissance, where Niccolò Machiavelli takes a starring
role as he learns, the hard way, about the true brutality
of power.
Vivid, gripping, irreverent, bawdy, profoundly moving, and
completely absorbing, The Enchantress of Florence is a
dazzling book full of wonders by one of the world’s most
important living writers.