CHAUTAUQUA INSTITUTION

@ Chautauqua August 17, 2010 / Amphitheater / 8:15 p.m.

To coincide with his Aug. 17 Chautauqua visit, Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence has been named as one of two Chautauqua Literary & Scientific Circle selections for Week Eight. “An Evening with Salman Rushdie,” a special 8:15 p.m. event in the Amphitheater, will serve as the Roundtable discussion. The CLSC selection for the Thursday, Aug. 19, Roundtable has yet to be announced.

The Enchantress of Florence, published by Random House in 2008, is two stories in one: a tale about three boys from Florence in the age of Lorenzo de' Medici, and a story of Akbar, greatest of the Mughal emperors, who established both the wondrous and short-lived city Fatehpur Sikri and a wondrous and short-lived policy of religious tolerance. In her review for The Guardian, Ursula K. Le Guin called The Enchantress of Florence a “brilliant, fascinating, generous novel,” and a “sumptuous, impetuous mixture of history with fable.”