Salman Rushdie 
Enchantress of Florence 

A tall, yellow-haired young European traveller calling himself Mogor dell Amore, the Mughal of Love, arrives at the court of the real Grand Mughal, the Emperor Akbar, with a tale to tell that begins to obsess the whole imperial capital. The stranger claims to be the child of a lost Mughal princess, the youngest sister of Akbars grandfather Babar: Qara Kz, Lady Black Eyes, a great beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery, who is taken captive first by an Uzbeg 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. When Argalia returns home with his Mughal mistress the city is mesmerised by her presence, and much trouble ensues. The Enchantress of Florence is a love story and a mystery the story of a woman attempting to command her own destiny in a mans world. It brings together two cities that barely know each other the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant emperor wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire and the treachery of sons, and the equally sensual Florentine world of powerful courtesans, humanist philosophy and inhuman torture, where Argalias boyhood friend il Machia Niccol Machiavelli is learning, the hard way, about the true brutality of power. These two worlds, so far apart, turn out to be uncannily alike, and the enchantments of women hold sway over them both. But is Mogors story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess? And if hes a liar, must he die?From the Hardcover edition.