Fiction – Literary – World Literature – Mexico – Historical

Translated by:Natasha Wimmer

RELEASE DATE: 12/31/2024(WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER’S WAREHOUSE)

Originally Published in Hardcover on 1/9/2024

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

One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernn Corts entered the city of Tenochtitlan today’s Mexico City. Later that day, he would meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.

Corts was accompanied by his nine captains, his troops, and his two translators: Friar Aguilar, a taciturn, former slave, and Malinalli, a strategic, former princess. Greeted at a ceremonial welcome meal by the steely princess Atotoxli, sister and wife of Moctezuma, the Spanish nearly bungle their entrance to the city. As they await their meeting with Moctezuma who is at a political, spiritual, and physical crossroads, and relies on hallucinogens to get himself through the day and in quest for any kind of answer from the gods the Spanish are ensconced in the labyrinthine palace. Soon, one of Cortss captains, Jazmn Caldera, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the city, begins to question the ease with which they were welcomed into the city, and wonders at the risks of getting out alive, much less conquering the empire.You Dreamed of Empires brings to life Tenochtitlan at its height, and reimagines its destiny. The incomparably original Alvaro Enrigue sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution, a restitutive, fantastical counter-attack, in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream.

AUTHOR BIO:

lvaro Enrigueis a Mexican writer who was a Cullman Center Fellow and a Fellow at the Princeton University Program in Latin American Studies. He has taught at New York University, Princeton University, the University of Maryland, and Columbia University. His work has appeared inThe New York Times,n+1,London Review of Books, andEl Pas, among others. His books includeSudden Death, and have been awarded the Herralde Prize, the Barcelona Prize, and the Poniatowska Prize. He lives in New York with his family and teaches Latin American Literature at Hofstra University.

Natasha Wimmer‘s translations include lvaro Enrigue’sSudden Death, Nona Fernndez’sSpace InvadersandThe Twilight Zone, and Roberto Bolao’sThe Savage Detectivesand2666. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.