enchantress of florence

i must admit. i have a soft spot for salman rushdie. i mean i fell spell-bindingly in love with the best book ever written- midnight's children. i treasure my one copy of satanic versus as if satan himself would hunt me down as if it was his only copy i held. and i'm enamoured with the man who, in my view, is the most brillian literary genius to grace our existence.

so, it was with much rose-tinted lenses that i read his latest book- the enchantress of florence. what delights me most, is that his books always centre around themes that i feel define me, or at least, is the reason for my existence. what do i mean?

india & pakistan,
separation,
kashmir,
power,
race,
religion,
tradition,
modernity,
tension.

and this time. he touched about...wait for it...wait for it.....the Medici family, Niccolo machiavelli...... whoa.. be still my beating heart. he gave me a window by which to see Niccolo machiavelli, the father of realism, a side of him that i had never ever ventured to understand.

Anyhow, the book to me- was fabulous. i loved it. i love how he blurs the line between reality and imagination. how he subtly leads us to question the narratives we believe. history that could have been so easily re-written. what do we believe? is it really real? or is it real because we believe that it's real?

the thing i love about rushdie, is that his books need to be mulled over, thought about, reexamined to discover different layers. i'll have to read this book again. but i highly recommend it to you.