2008 Summer Arts Preview

By Salman Rushdie
May 27

Even while political circumstances occasionally overshadowed his literary career, Rushdie has continued to write one toweringly ambitious novel after another, fatwa or not, to critical notices that have varied wildly in their opinions but have steadily diminished in volume. This isn't Rushdie's first "return to form" novel, but it is a genuinely good book: a historical tale (the tall tale is Rushdie's genre of choice) of two cities, Renaissance era Florence and the capital of the Mughal empire, plus the legend of an impossibly beautiful woman and the curious interplay and merging of East and West, which Rushdie knows so well. An entertaining rascal named Niccolo Machiavelli has an extended cameo.