Bookmaker Ladbrokes has installed Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence as the 4-1 favourite to win the Man Booker prize this year. I find the book hard to put down, having finished two-thirds of the novel in the last two days, getting the references easily as an Indian, but I wonder if it’s too exotic for the West though quite a bit of it is about Florence.
Ah Florence! Reading the book brought back memories of the trip my wife and I made to Florence. She was in fact standing in the foreground of this picture which I cropped out before posting it here. This place with the copy of Michelangelo’s David, just a short walk from the Uffizi art gallery, is one of the favourite tourist attractions, much more crowded than the church square with a statue of the famous Florentine Dante.
Florence is back in the news again not just for The Enchantress of Florence, which has more to do with India during the rule of Akbar the great Mughal, but also for the Chinese. Yes, the Chinese.
