Álvaro Enrigue, _You Dreamed of Empires, trans. Natasha Wimmer

 I WAS A mite concerned, upon commencing this novel, to see it was about the arrival of Cortés and his Spaniards in Tenochtitlan in 1519, Enrigue already having made fictional use of that event in Sudden Death. Why revisit it? Turns out, however, that Enrigue changes things up by narrating mainly from the point of view of the indigenous Mexicans, so You Dreamed of Empires is well worth your time even if you have already read Sudden Death. (If you have not read Sudden Death, you really should.)

The Spanish conquest of Mexico does raise questions. Why did the Aztec empire not simply kill Cortés, enslave his men, and have done with things? My mid-1960s U.S. education suggested the Aztecs were technologically outclassed (horses, gunpowder), superstitious, and disorganized. None of that sounds likely at this point. 

Enrigue's evocation of the encounter sounds truer. The Aztecs did not know quite what to do with the smelly, hairy strangers who had arrived at the capital for several reasons. For one thing, the subject peoples of their empire were oppressed and resentful and looking for an opportunity to overthrow them. For another, their administrative protocols were so elaborate as to hamstring them, procedurally, creating fatal delays. Enrigue has a lot of fun with Tlilpotonqui, cihuacoatl (chief executive) of Tenochtitlan and his anxious efforts to see that the forms are observed--these chapters reminded me of Saint Simon explaining the proprieties of Versailles.

For another--these are likely Enrigue's own inventions--Moctezuma, the emperor, is (a) fascinated by the Spaniards' horses and wants to keep them around long enough to figure out how to use them and (b) is  tripping on mushrooms most of the time. 

So, one could say the barbarians won. Except there is an alternative-history twist at the end that I am still trying to figure out. 

The real stars of the novel, though, are Atotoxtli, Moctezuma's sister and wife, and Malinalli, a captive princess who is Cortés's translator. Their scene together is worthy of Schiller's imagined meeting between Queen Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots.