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Salman Rushdie will be at Borders West on Friday, July 11, to read from his new novel "The Enchantress of Florence." Rushdie faced threats to his life after his fourth novel, "The Satanic Verses," led Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini to call for his death. -

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In the distant past, on the Indian subcontinent, a mysterious traveler arrives in the court of a mighty emperor with a story to tell. "He had been driven out of his door by stories of wonder," our author tells us, "and by one in particular, a story which could make his fortune or else cost him his life."

The traveler himself is (or claims to be) Niccol Vespucci, but the true author of the tale is Salman Rushdie, another world traveler whose storytelling has imperiled his own life. "The Enchantress of Florence" is his 11th work of fiction, a sensuous and fanciful tale of cultures colliding against a vivid historical backdrop.

"The Enchantress of Florence" takes place in a time and place "before the real and unreal were segregated forever and doomed to live apart under different monarchs and separate legal systems," when "the dream-poetry of the quotidian had not yet been crushed by blinkered, prosy fact."

In the literal sense, it is set in the 1500s, a time when the Mughal empire reigned over the Indian subcontinent and the Medici over the Florence of its title, but Rushdie's wondrous writing has the loosest of acquaintances with literal truth. Many of his characters are historical figures -- Machiavelli will be perhaps the best-known to Western audiences -- but "The Enchantress" is more fable than history.

Its plot begins with a time-honored device: a stranger comes to visit with a story to tell. The destination is Sikri, the capital city of the Mughal, ruled by the all-powerful Akbar the Great, a pensive man whose omnipotence keeps him at a distance from even his own wives.

The true identity of the yellow-haired stranger in the harlequin-colored leather coat is the mystery at the center of the novel. His story takes the reader halfway across the world to his home city of Florence, with numerous digressions along the way.

Rushdie's plot is too complex to be summed up with a few brief sentences. "The Enchantress" braids together at least four substantial narratives. The struggle for power in the Mughal court is one. The storyteller's treacherous journey to Sikri is yet another. Readers also hear the tale of princess Qara K z, the enchantress herself, a woman whose beauty makes great men bend to her will, as well as that of three Florentine friends whose destinies collide with the princess's in very different ways.

Rushdie's writing is as light as a meringue and filled with waggish humor. His twin settings are painted with a vivid brush, but he is not bogged down with historical minutiae. Rushdie's aim is to entertain, not to numb his reader with incomprehensibly accurate 16th-century dialogue.

While a passing familiarity with some of the figures fictionalized here (Amerigo Vespucci and Vlad the Impaler among them) would enhance the reading experience, such knowledge is not necessary to understand -- or enjoy -- the story. The most vivid character is Akbar the Great, whose exploits include comically faltering attempts at intimacy with his imaginary wife Jodhabai.

Some of Rushdie's more fantastical personages -- the indomitable warrior Argalia and the matchless beauty Qara K z -- feel a bit flat. But the novel is well-populated with a supporting cast of real, fleshed-out humans instantly recognizable to readers a half-millenium and half a world away.

Rushdie's daunting reputation as a serious author should not deter readers from losing themselves in "The Enchantress." While it does not tackle the weighty themes addressed by his other works, it bewitches, like its heroine, with beauty and charm.