Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica,

I'm Michael Silverblatt,

and this is Bookworm.

I am really delighted

to have with me,

Saman Rushdie.

His new book is

The Enchantress of Florence.

I happen to think

it's one of his very best book, Second Two Midnight's Children.

I think it's beautifully done. In particular, what I love is that he seems to have built a kind of narrative three-ring circus with flaming hoops and anything that he chooses can be driven through those hoops.

So it's as if he does not know, nor do you, in advance, what these tigers and circus animals that are going to be jumping through hoops and balancing on big rubber balls.

The arena has been set up for a miraculous circus parade of East Meets West during the period of the Renaissance.

And the question is, what does it look like when East meets West? And what is the result

in the terms of what dreams are like, both waking and sleeping dreams, what history becomes

like when the world becomes doubled in size.

What does the new world look like as it's dreamt of from Florence and from India?

...