At least it can in Salman Rushdie's latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence, a chronicle of two journeys, one to Florence and one to India.

The novel, like its Indian-born creator, begins in the East. Rushdie's own journey - which includes a knighthood bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II yesterday - brings him to the Free Library of Philadelphia at 7 tonight to promote his latest work.

The Enchantress begins in the 16th century and features the Mogor dell'Amore, a storyteller with an enchanting tongue. He travels to meet Akbar the Great, emperor of the Mughal Empire, and there he offers a secret in exchange for clemency after various mischievous acts that could have cost him his head.

A subplot focuses on the journey of Qara Köz, a legendary princess who travels from the Mughal Empire and into dell'Amore's native Florence. She, like the Mogor, eases the journey with magic. Lives overlap, paradox is revealed, and mysteries are solved.

Or at least some of them.

Rushdie avoids definitive endings and instead focuses on the root of conflict.

"It is a book with a riddle in it," he said in a recent phone interview. "The answer is not revealed until right at the end. And even then there are two to three possible answers."

He chuckled, a wry laugh that popped up throughout the interview.

The novel reflects the modern complications between East and West. By weaving different cultures into his tale, Rushdie shows that "everything might be its opposite" and that universal human behavior transcends geography.

"The period this book was set in is really the period where these two worlds became aware of each other," Rushdie said. "Sometimes if you go back to the beginning of a story, you begin to find out why it worked out the way it did."

Rushdie's work is heavy with metaphor and allusion, but he doesn't think they get in the way of the story. Ultimately, Rushdie believes in reading for reading's sake.

"I use the cooking analogy," Rushdie said. "If you are making a rich stew, you put all these kinds of things into it, all of these herbs and spices, and you don't necessarily want your guest to be able to identify every single herb or spice or ingredient. You know, you want them to enjoy the stew."

Rushdie, speaking by cell phone as he was being driven to an appearance in California, peppered the interview with pauses and repetitions, giving as much attention to the spoken word as he does to the written one.

The detail-oriented approach to language is what makes his books special and makes him a distinguished literary figure - not the celebrity news about his marriages or the antipathy against him in parts of the Muslim world.

"I have always thought that there is no reason why the language in a novel should not be given the same level of close attention that the language in a poem is given," Rushdie explained. "It just means that the novel will take longer to write but, you know, that is all right."

Language and experience produce the exotic flair of Indian culture, a familiar setting in any Rushdie novel. Enchantress features an expansive bibliography, but it is Rushdie's own experiences that enliven the static historical world.

In 1967, a young Rushdie spent the summer in Florence, shortly after the embankment of the Arno River collapsed, destroying much of the city's history.

"The city was in a whirlwind stage," Rushdie recalled. "That made it . . . more emotionally affecting."

Rushdie says many readers confuse historical fact with his imaginative details. But what he does is blend them seamlessly. Combining elements of magical realism with his memories of Florence after the flood, Rushdie endows his characters with the ability to forecast the future by reading the flow of rivers.

The exciting stuff doesn't have to be made up, Rushdie explains. The Ottoman Court really did employ their gardeners as assassins, and Shah Ismail of Persia did turn the skulls of defeated rivals into bejeweled wine goblets.

"It is all the boring stuff that I made up," he said, laughing.

To prepare for this novel Rushdie researched countless aspects of 16th-century culture. But when it came time to write, Rushdie put research aside and wrote from imagination and memory alone.

And one day, the book was complete.

"There is a point at which the book doesn't belong to you anymore, it belongs to itself," Rushdie said. "It is true about the act of creation, isn't it? You create something that then acquires its own life. . . . it has to go out into the world and make its own way and that is true of a child or a book."

Rushdie speaks of his novel the way a parent speaks of a child: He nurtures it, takes pride in its success, and refers to its fame by saying it has made "many friends."

His popular masterpiece Midnight's Children won the 1981 Booker and received the Booker of Bookers, honoring the best among the prize winners, in 1993. Rushdie appreciates this recognition and said he hoped his novels would endure beyond the next two to three generations.

"After that you can talk about it, you know, being one of those books that has lasted," he said.

One wonders what Rushdie can do to match that early success.

He answers this question by comparing his own career to that of Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22.

"Sometimes people would say to him that they felt he had never written a novel as good as Catch-22 again and he would say, 'Yeah, but neither has anyone else.' "

Read Inquirer book critic Carlin Romano's review of "The Enchantress of Florence" at http://go.philly. com/books.