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.

薩曼·魯西迪 (1947-)，英國著名作傢。生於印度孟買一個穆斯林傢庭，在英國接受教育。一九七五年他的第一部小說齣版，第二部小說《午夜之子》為他贏得瞭國際聲譽。之後他的一係列作品深入探討瞭曆史和哲學問題，被稱為“後殖民文學教父”。在世界文壇，魯西迪是所有國際大奬的寵 兒，他高産且作品高質量，經得專業人士的品評，也贏得無數讀者的好評，受到君特·格拉斯、戈迪默、米蘭·昆德拉等世界文學大師的一緻推崇。他的《午夜之子》，三次獲得布剋奬，可謂“布剋奬”之尊。魯西迪目前共齣版長篇小說十部、短篇小說集三部，另有兩部兒童作品、一部迴憶錄及十餘部非小說作品。主要作品有《午夜之子》《羞恥》《摩爾人的最後嘆息》《她腳下的土地》《小醜薩利瑪》《佛羅倫薩的神女》等。

譯者 劉凱芳 (1941-2016)，廈門大學外文學院英語係教授，《廈門大學學報（哲社版）》編委。長期從事英語語言文學教學與文學翻譯工作。譯作有《可以吃的女人》、《品徹·馬丁》、《叛逆年代》《愛上浪漫》《處女與吉普賽人》、《匹剋威剋外傳》等，另有大量的中短篇譯作發錶於《外國文藝》《世界文學》等刊物。