You Dreamed of Empires

A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF 2024

A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR

"Short, strange, spiky and sublime." --Dwight Garner, New York Times

"Funny, ghastly, eye-opening, marvelous." --Wall Street Journal

From the visionary author of Sudden Death, a hallucinatory, revelatory colonial revenge story.

One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés enters the city of Tenochtitlan - today's Mexico City. Later that day, he will meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.

Cortés is accompanied by his captains, his troops, his prized horses, and his two translators: Friar Aguilar, a taciturn friar, and Malinalli, an enslaved, strategic Nahua princess. After nearly bungling their entrance to the city, the Spaniards are greeted at a ceremonial welcome meal by the steely Aztec princess Atotoxtli, sister and wife of Moctezuma. As they await their meeting with the emperor - who is at a political and spiritual crossroads, and relies on hallucinogens to get by - Cortés and his entourage are ensconced in the labyrinthine palace. Soon, one of Cortés's captains, Jazmín Caldera, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the place, begins to question the ease with which they were welcomed into the city, and wonders at the chances of getting out alive, much less conquering the empire. And what if... they don't?

You Dreamed of Empires brings Tenochtitlan to life at its height, and reimagines its destiny. The incomparably original Álvaro Enrigue sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution, a restitutive, fantastical counterattack, in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream.

Author: Álvaro Enrigue
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Published: 12/31/2024
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 7.87h x 5.12w x 0.79d
ISBN: 9780593544808


Review Citation(s):
Shelf Awareness 01/11/2025

About the Author
Álvaro Enrigue is a Mexican writer whose most recent novel is Sudden Death. His work has appeared in The New York Times, the London Review of Books, El País, and n+1, among other publications. His books have been awarded the Herralde Prize, the Barcelona Prize, and the Poniatowska Prize. A former Fellow at the Cullman Center and at Princeton University, he teaches Latin American Literature at Hofstra University and lives with his family in New York City.

Natasha Wimmer's translations include Álvaro Enrigue's Sudden Death, Nona Fernández's Space Invaders and The Twilight Zone, and Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives and 2666. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.