The Enchantress of Florence

A young European traveler calling himself 'Mogor dell 'Amora', the Mughal of Love arrives at the court of Emperor Akbar. The stranger claims to be the child of a lost Mughal princess, the youngest sister of Akbar's grandfather Babar, Qara Koz, a great beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery. It brings together two cities that barely know each other - the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant emperor wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire and the treachery of sons, and the equally sensual Florentine world of powerful courtesans, humanist philosophy and inhuman torture, where Argalia's boyhood friend 'il Machia' - Niccolo Machiavelli - is learning, the hard way, about the true brutality of power. These two worlds, so far apart, turn out to be uncannily alike, and the enchantments of women hold sway over them both. But is Mogor's story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess? And if he's a liar, must he die?