The Great Horned One leaks his release date for The Enchantress of Florence: April in the UK, June 3rd in Amrika, August for maple-leaved Kannada.

… The Enchantress Of Florence… begins on a farm outside Florence where the ageing Niccolo Machiavelli receives the personal emissary of the first Mughal emperor of India. [Link]

A tall, yellow-haired young European traveller calling himself ‘Mogor dell’Amore’, the Mughal of Love, arrives at the court of…Emperor Akbar… [claiming] to be the child of a lost Mughal princess, the youngest sister of Akbar’s grandfather Babar: Qara Koz, ‘Lady Black Eyes’ … who is taken captive first by an Uzbek warlord, then by the Shah of Persia, and finally becomes the lover of a certain Argalia, a Florentine soldier of fortune, commander of the armies of the Ottoman Sultan… The Enchantress of Florence… brings together… the hedonistic Mughal capital… and the equally sensual Florentine world… where Argalia’s boyhood friend “il Machia” - Niccolo Machiavelli - is learning… about the true brutality of power… [Link]

Is it just me, or have the titles been getting less original over the years? This, like that clownish twist of phrase recalling a ghastly Indian dhaba, is tin-eared and tinnitus-touched. But the Shalimar text was solid.

… he grew up… 100 yards away from Farrokh Bulsara, later known as Freddie Mercury… he was in the “unusually happy” condition of a writer who has just handed over his latest manuscript… to his publisher. The Enchantress of Florence was 10 years in the making… [Link]

… Rushdie has been described by… Bill Clinton as “the most charismatic individual I’ve ever met”… he was born eight weeks to the day before the end of the British Empire. “For eight weeks I was pre-colonial, and ever since I’ve been post-colonial…”

… asked about Kashmiri experiences drawn on for Shalimar the Clown, Rushdie explained that its roots were in a trip 20 years ago, when he was working on a documentary film, and he met a traveling group who would become characters in the novel… “I find that the solution often lies in the female characters. I think I’m writing about men, but I’m actually writing about women… The moral is: To run off with an American Ambassador is always a bad idea.” [Link]