YOU DREAMED OF EMPIRES

A vision of the Aztec empire on the verge of conquest.

In 1520, Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés began to wrest control of Tenochtitlan (in what is now Mexico City) from the Aztecs. But in November 1519, when Enrigue’s arch historical novel is set, the two cultures were play-acting at diplomacy. The Aztecs are baffled by the Spaniards’ horses, the proclamations of their King Charles I, and tales of Christianity. The conquistadores, meanwhile, find the food repulsive, the long waits frustrating, and are troubled by a citadel decorated with thousands of skulls. In the run-up to the inevitable horrors to come, Enrigue focuses on one junior representative from each side: Jazmín Caldera, an investor in Cortés’ expedition, and Atotoxtli, the sister and (figurehead) wife of Moctezuma, the Aztec emperor whose alliances are crumbling and who is prone to retreat into a druggy, sleepy haze. Moctezuma is mercurial, prone to calling for the execution of assistants at the smallest slights, but the Spaniards aren’t much better, slavers biding their time. Enrigue’s tone (nicely conveyed via Wimmer’s translation) is of ironic disbelief—the fate of two global cultures turns on the narcissistic preening of these two tribes? (“If there’s anything Spaniards and Mexicans have always agreed upon, it’s that nobody is less qualified to govern than the government itself,” Enrigue quips.) Little has changed, Enrigue means to say, at certain moments pushing the story out of strict historical fiction, at one point suggesting that a foreboding sound echoes a T. Rex song, or crafting an ahistorical dream sequence in which history turns the Aztecs’ way. In the acknowledgments, Enrigue cites Borges as a key inspiration, and the novel certainly shares an affinity for dark humor, metanarrative, and detail about history, real and imagined. But the irony and wit Enrigue brings to the story is entirely his own.

An offbeat, well-turned riff on anti-colonialist themes.