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The Enchantress of Florence
The Enchantress of Florence
Nov 11, 2025 9:19 AM

Author:Salman Rushdie

The Enchantress of Florence

Discover this magnificent magical novel from the Booker-prize winning author of Midnight's Children.

When a young European traveller arrives at Sikri, the court of Mughal Emperor Akbar, the tale he spins brings the whole imperial capital to the brink of obsession. He calls himself 'Mogor dell'Amore', the Mughal of Love, and claims to be the son of a lost princess, whose name and very existence has been erased from the country's history: Qara Köz, or 'Lady Black Eyes'.

Lady Black Eyes is a fabled beauty believed to possess great powers of enchantment and sorcery. After a series of abductions by besotted warlords, she finds herself carried to Machiavellian Florence. In her attempts to command her own destiny in a world ruled by men, Lady Black Eyes brings together the two great cities of sensual Florence and hedonistic Sikri, so far apart and yet so alike, and two worlds become dangerously entwined.

'Vintage Rushdie...reminds us, in case we may have forgotten, that he can tell a story ...better than anyone else in the language' Sunday Telegraph

Reviews

Deep Lane, [Doty’s] best work yet, is astute, contemplative and deeply moving.

—— Washington Post

Mark Doty’s ninth collection displays his customary gift for emphatic observation, collapsing the distance between poet and subject to establish an observance of both secular and sexual mysteries.

—— W N Herbert , Literary Review

Full of urban romanticism, with images of delving and desire and the search for “the wild unsayable”, mixed in with wonderings about his parents.

—— John Walsh , Independent

The collection is permeated with a sense of finding depth, travelling downward and into roots.

—— Charlotte Runcie , Daily Telegraph

that sense of suffocation and slowly creeping madness is something that Touched - the latest novella from the Hammer horror imprint - expertly mines

—— Daily Mail

An old fashioned, scary horror story

—— Sunday Mirror

Haunting novella from Joanna Briscoe…a disorientating ride

—— Grazia

A wonderfully claustrophobic horror. It's all wonderfully creepy ... Touched is thoroughly eerie, an enjoyably chilling sliver of ice on a hot summer's day

—— Observer

a spine-chilling tale of a creepy cottage and a mother’s terror

—— Daily Express

Deeply creepy

—— Diva

Briscoe builds suspense brilliantly

—— The Bookbag

Touched is a terrific little ghost story …This is an eminently accessible text, bolstered by an exquisitely composed story

—— Tor.com

a ghastly gathering sense of unease never lets up… chilling tale

—— Woman & Home

Intriguing novel

—— Claire Looby , Irish Times

An eternal, melancholy story which never fails to tug at the heartstrings

—— Maxim Jakubowski , Lovereading

Goldsworthy’s mischievous debut updates that constant trope about gaining the world and losing your soul in a contemporary London setting that is two parts Bulgakov to one part Richard Curtis’s Notting Hill

—— Michael Conaghan , Belfast Telegraph Morning

Albert has made a novel that approaches depression and maternal anxiety with candid honesty, transforming writing on motherhood forever

—— Aaron Calvin , AskMen UK

A hilarious, honest, and eye-opening book, this is a must have for any new mum or mum-to-be

—— Mummy Pages

Funny and heartfelt

—— i (The paper for today)

Ms. Moran['s] ... funny and cheerfully dirty coming-of-age novel has a hard kernel of class awareness ... sloppy, big-hearted and alive in all the right ways.

—— Dwight Garner , New York Times

there’s so much real feeling too. Johanna’s vulnerability and bravado, as she moves out of her world and falls in love is beautifully done’ or ‘ and running through it all, with a visceral power that most writers should envy, is the shame and grinding anxiety of being poor

—— Sunday Times

Moran also writes brilliantly about music, and especially about what music can do. She carries Johanna through this novel with incredible verve, extravagant candour, and a lot of heart. Johanna is … a wonderful heroine. A heroine who cares, who bravely sallies forth and makes things happen, who gives of herself, who is refreshingly unashamed. She’s so confident, it’s glorious

—— The Independent on Sunday

an entertaining read, with Moran in fine voice – hilarious, wild, imaginative and highly valuable…Moran is in danger of becoming to female masturbation what Keats was to Nightingales…

—— Barbara Ellen , The Observer

rude, big-hearted, wise-cracking novel…so filthy she’ll make you blush

—— Christina Patterson , The Sunday Times

This is going to be a bestseller…A sharp, hilarious and controversial read

—— The Bookseller

Ali Smith is a master of language. Vigorous, vivid writing that is Ali Smith incarnate

—— Alice Thompson , Herald

Ingeniously conceived, gloriously inventive

—— NPR

Dizzyingly ambitious . . . endlessly artful, creating work that feels infinite in its scope and intimate at the same time. [A] swirling panoramic

—— Atlantic

Brilliant . . . the sort of death-defying storytelling acrobatics that don't seem entirely possible

—— Washington Post

Having read this now twice, in both directions so to speak, I've decided - and I do not write this flippantly - that Ali Smith is a genius

—— Susan McCallum , LA Review of Books

Approaches the world as only a novel can. The book moves not so much in a straight line as in a twisting helix pattern . . . delivers the heat of life and the return of beauty in the face of loss

—— Kenneth Miller , Everyday Ebook

A unique conversation between past and present

—— Milwaukee Journal

Wildly inventive . . . lyrical, fresh

—— Bustle Magazine
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