Álvaro Enrigue’s You Dreamed of Empires (translated by Natasha Wimmer – pub date 1/9/2024, Riverhead Books (thanks for the gifted advanced copy!)) is a fever dream of a reimagined meeting between Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma in 1519. Edgar Allen Poe once wrote “all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream,” and this novel, with a touch of madness and hefty dose of psychedelics, feels like you’re reading a novel in a dream within a dream. Toss in the modernity of the writing, and you can’t put this story that takes place over a single day down.
Cortés is boring. Horribly so. But his captains, his translators, especially Malinalli, even the stable boy, Badillo, are vibrant and captivating. (The horses and their destruction as well as Moctezuma’s fascination with them are some of my more favorite parts of the novel. My favorite part is likely Captain Caldera trying to eat between two priests who reek of sacrificial blood and being unwashed.) Moctezuma, much like Cortés, slips into the background with his sister (and wife) the Aztec princess, Atotoxtli, stealing scene after scene.
This is a novel of worlds colliding with a reimagined outcome. Moctezuma welcomes Cortés and his men to Tenochititlan. They are given rooms in a palace that is a labyrinth to most of them while awaiting the actual meeting with Moctezuma, and they start to question if they are guests or prisoners. Conquering the city becomes second to just getting out of the palace. Enrigue takes this would-be conquest and adds a little pizzazz in the form of a hallucinogen – the end result is a heck of a unique novel. The names make it a little bit difficult initially but stick with it. I promise.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 