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Salman Rushdie: © Beowulf Sheehan / PEN American CenterEast meets West, as it always does in Salman Rushdie's novels, and in his latest work, a feast of storytelling alternately set in 16th-century Italy and India, he explores the theme in a large historical context. A European traveler arrives at the Mughal court of Akbar the Great, in India, to tell a story about a mysterious woman, Lady Black Eyes, who is not only blessed with powers of sorcery but also possesses the gift of being in the right place at the right time—on a battlefield in the Middle East; in Renaissance Florence, where under her spell Niccoló Machiavelli writes his masterpiece, The Prince; and in the New World, where “the ordinary laws of space and time [do] not apply.” The same holds true for the masterful storytelling of The Enchantress of Florence.

Anchor Lisa Mullins with Salman Rushdie in The World's studios