FICTIONSalman Rushdie's lengthy, chaotic novel of the Mughals, the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Italy has its moments, but is ultimately tedious, writes Eileen Battersby
How many facts and historical cross-references does it take to spin the thinnest of yarns into a lengthy, chaotic narrative? Quite a lot, some six pages of bibliography, eight websites, not forgetting the researcher thanked in the acknowledgements included at the back of Salman Rushdie's latest extravaganza. Heaving with emperors, warriors, sandstone palaces, scented flesh, knowing whores, lies, perfumes, mandrakes as well as glimpses into life as lived in Renaissance Florence and Mughal India, it must have been fun to write - a lot more fun than it is to read.
That said, there is an almost engagingly wayward exuberance about it all, should one decide to battle on through the excess, the historical references, the meticulous research the stilted dialogue and a cast of thousands - most of whom are little more than caricatures caught up in a novel that feels more like a marathon cartoon loosely set in the 16th century.
Suspicion runs through the book, many of the characters are wary and rightly so - these are difficult times, days when food and drink are freely poisoned, unsuspecting victims are fed lethal helpings of opium, and many of the brothels are staffed by willing spies. Throughout the action, Rushdie repeatedly places his male characters at the mercy of whores, many of whom are skilled in the arts of love and survival. If the women are more interesting than the men, it is largely because the men in this book are too ridiculous for words. As one character notes: "Women have always moaned about men but it turns out that their deepest complaints are reserved for one another, because while they expect men to be fickle, treacherous and weak, they judge their own sex by higher standards."
Akbar, the emperor, is so disturbed that despite his many wives, the only one he fully trusts and reveres is Jodha - and she is imaginary, his ideal woman. His other wives are not impressed, but they have to accept that they are secondary to a woman who does not exist. Yes, it's that kind of book.
Sexual politics dominate the book. It is not a satire, though; it is too wistful for that. If this book has any definite objective, aside from testing his powers as a storyteller - and tested they are, as Rushdie the polemicist is not a natural storyteller - The Enchantress of Florence is a lament for love. Even Akbar, about to be succeeded by his appalling sons, is even more concerned with love than he is with desire, and desire stands high in his obsessions. The other theme is lost youth - several of the characters look younger than they are, while others appear to have defied time altogether. One man recalls his mother lying on her deathbed when he was a young man, and he recalls that she looked more like his sister "than a parent".
Having established his reputation on the reality of recent history, Rushdie appears to have returned to territory he previously visited in the delightful Haroun and The Sea of Stories (1990). In that work, he ably displayed a lightness of touch not usually associated with him. In this new book, there are flashes of wit, and, even at his most dense, Rushdie does possess an often saving sense of humour.
So it all begins with the arrival of a yellow-haired stranger: "The stranger rode in a bullock-cart, but instead of being seated on the rough cushions therein he stood up like a god, holding on to the rail of the cart's latticework frame with one insouciant hand . . . The driver had long ago given up shouting at him, at first taking the foreigner for a fool . . . The man might indeed be foolish, one could go so far as to say that he had a fool's overly pretty face and wore a fool's unsuitable clothes - a coat of coloured leather lozenges, in such heat! - but his balance was immaculate."
This is the Florentine capable of dreaming in seven languages who arrives in the city of Akbar the Great and who sustains the emperor's interest through a long, drawn-out story about a woman of surreal beauty. And as Akbar, having invented his Queen Jodha, "was of the opinion that it was the real queens who were the phantoms and the non-existent beloved who was real", telling him stories should not prove too difficult.
THE NARRATIVE MOVES back and forth between an exotic India and Florence under the grip of Medici intrigue. Among the 86 books included in Rushdie's source texts are The Society of Renaissance Italy: A Documentary Study (2001), Edward Creasy's History of the Ottoman Turks (1991) and Bamber Gascoigne's The Great Mughals: India's Most Flamboyant Rulers (2002), all of which should - and do - contribute some colour. Yet this novel, with its attractive jacket and dramatically contrasting front and back inside endpapers, never ignites. It reads as if Rushdie, overwhelmed by his source material, never succeeds in asserting himself over either it or his characters. It is both random and tedious. Ultimately it is too easy to begin sharing the sentiments of one of Rushdie's earlier creations: " . . . after exactly eleven minutes Haroun's attention wandered, and when the film ended he had no idea how it all turned out." (From Haroun and the Sea of Stories.)
The flabby, good-natured narrative meanders on, buoyed up by earthy gags, with most of the men bragging about the amount of sex they require, while some of the women plot and deliberate, and Qara Koz - "her beauty like a flame" - pursues a career as a woman of action.
Is it all a disappointment? No, but Rushdie has yet to recapture the imaginative sense of purpose that sustained The Moor's Last Sigh (1995), which remains the closest he has come to returning to the inspired writer who wrote Midnight's Children (1981) and Shame (1983). There is no denying that Rushdie's career has been dominated by the sheer quality of those early works, in which he had so much to say, and also, that by becoming caught between two cultures he has been left behind by a generation of outstanding Indian novelists who have continued to observe life in modern India.
Perhaps the biggest problem encountered when reading this new book, aside from the stodgy prose, is that the source material is fascinating and the idea of Renaissance Florence does set the imagination on fire in a way that Rushdie never does. Why read a novel when the respective histories of the Mughals, the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance are so dramatic? Abraham Early's The Mughal World - India's Tainted Paradise has just been paper-backed and is far more exciting. In fairness to Rushdie, by looking to a period set more than 500 years in the past, perhaps he was deliberately distancing himself from his previous works and seeking new stories. The book looks instead to A Thousand and One Arabian Nights and also to the notion of storytelling without ever shaking off that theme of love imagined or lost or both.
Midway through the narrative, Rushdie injects: "The story was completely untrue, but the untruth of untrue stories could sometimes be of service in the real world . . . ". The test of any story, any novel, is the urge to discover what happens next. Rushdie's failure here is simple - his tale, invention based on fact, despite its sporadic colour, lacks the life of inspired story, leaving the reader tired perhaps - but far from contented.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
The Enchantress of Florence By Salman Rushdie Jonathan Cape, 357pp. £18.99