Will I love You Dreamed of Empires?

I know the world of Montezuma, as I am a historian of the Aztecs and their encounter with Spanish conquistadors (and indeed in interviews Enrigue has generously cited my book When Montezuma Met Cortés as an inspiration). But nothing could have prepared me for the particular vision of Montezuma's world that Enrigue has conjured up and articulated here—alluring, disturbing, compelling, immersive, darkly amusing. I am often asked if I think You Dreamed of Empires is accurate. That is, of course, beside the point! The novel accurately reflects Enrigue's imagination and his artful ability to interpret the historical past in memorable… show more.

The inventiveness of the writing, the high-wire act of sustaining that immersive prose, that it was not longer than it needed to be.

I was enthralled by this book because it seems to pull off the impossible: it feels historically accurate and utterly alien, yet it’s perfectly clear what is happening most of the time – there’s at least one hallucinatory passage that deliriously rattled my brain. It is rich in description yet never plods. It chronicles the sometimes-bumbling trek of Hernan Cortes and his Spanish Conquistadores to the center of the Aztec Empire in 1521. What follows are a clash of cultures, a sharing of knowledge and a struggle for power amid hilarious misunderstandings and multiple tragedies. Authentic yet irreverent, poetic yet… show more.