Of all the liberties taken by latter generations on the way life really was in olden days, this is one that Emperor Akbar (reigned: 1556-1605) probably wouldn?t let go. If he had a time vroomobile, he would be here to sue Rushdie right now. For playing a little too lightly with fact, a little too heavily with fiction, and demanding one indulgence too many. Enough to be thrown into the elephant pit, surely. If The Enchantress of Florence acquits itself with its fictional tale of a lady who lived in the Mughal & Medici intersexion space, it?s partly because this novel levels its sights on your audiovisual sensibilities in its early moments, paradoxically by evoking sounds of whispered woes amid regal insignia, and partly because it poses questions about real existence and truth value that could keep you arguing awhile. In India, the Great Jodha Debate has taken partial place already, thanks to a risibly revised role essayed by Aishwarya Rai in a Hindi film. Willed by Akbar into consciousness in Rushdie’s novel, she is still arguing with herself: ?Did she exist only because of his suspension of disbelief in the possibility of her existence??

Well, it was love of argument that inspired Akbar?s Ibadat Khana at Fatehpur Sikri in the first place. And in Rushdie?s telling, the existence of the emperor?s lady love, Jodha, is no less imaginary than the influence of Qara Koz, Lady Black Eyes, the ?hidden Mughal princess? struck off history?s scrolls by her brother Babar, to be saved by poets and possibly an Italian adventurer who lands at the Mughal court to tell her story. Rushdie?s latest work of fiction uses the gaps of history to tease the limits of plausibility with inventive imagination. Some of it is good, some is clumsy. Though cleverly crafted, the Akbar-Birbal exchanges don?t appear to add up to anything, and even after nixing the particulars, seem to ultimately miss what?s left as universal.

But this story is about Qara Koz, who grew up in Andizhan, like Babar, and ended up in America, entrancing everyone from Persia to Florence along the way. More than that, it is an utterly unruly re-envisioning of what royalty sans rigidity could have meant at a time the world was in rethink mode within the privacy of intellect. Even an inversion of dress codes could have been conceivable: if it was self-evident that veiled women were equals, with no sex symbol to define a thence descending order of sexiness, then nudity to one another?s gaze in femaledom might achieve a similar liberation from sexual envy. For civilization?s sake, of course.

But again, this is about Qara Koz, who starts her enchantress life as a war captive and bedazzles the man in whose name Babar would storm India, Shah Ismail, until he belittles the original Mughal success strategy in a fit of fatalism and loses a war. She then falls for the Ottoman warrior who vanquishes him, before finding herself in Florence as Angelica, la sans pareille, her bittersweet fragrance suffusing the land, until she?s labelled a witch and forced to choose life over love yet again. ?This was a dream for [Akbar], an undreamed vision of what a woman might be. It alarmed him, aroused him, intoxicated him, possessed him.? And all of Sikri, too, to the dismay of Jodha and also the orthodox who sought vainly to define divine domains of power on earth. Akbar, you see, was losing himself to the free-willed Qara Koz. ?Her will was equal to the task,? at every turn of the wheel. She was determined to be a shaper rather than victim of history. Her own ?secret? inspiration was no more than a few words of nuanced novelty, but it was enough to roar her on. This novel does have its share of jarring extras, noisy clatters and ungainly scenes. It also suffers from a surfeit of silly surmises. Taken lightly rather than literally, though, it is lavishly lyrical.