You Dreamed of Empires
Ratings11
Average rating4.1
From the visionary author of Sudden Death, a hallucinatory, revelatory colonial revenge story.
One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés enters the city of Tenochtitlan – today’s Mexico City. Later that day, he will meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.
Cortés is accompanied by his captains, his troops, his prized horses, and his two translators: Friar Aguilar, a taciturn friar, and Malinalli, an enslaved, strategic Nahua princess. After nearly bungling their entrance to the city, the Spaniards are greeted at a ceremonial welcome meal by the steely Aztec princess Atotoxtli, sister and wife of Moctezuma. As they await their meeting with the emperor – who is at a political and spiritual crossroads, and relies on hallucinogens to get by – Cortés and his entourage are ensconced in the labyrinthine palace. Soon, one of Cortés’s captains, Jazmín Caldera, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the place, begins to question the ease with which they were welcomed into the city, and wonders at the chances of getting out alive, much less conquering the empire. And what if… they don’t?
You Dreamed of Empires brings Tenochtitlan to life at its height, and reimagines its destiny. The incomparably original Álvaro Enrigue sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution, a restitutive, fantastical counterattack, in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream.
Tags
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
So, Cortez is in Tenochtitlan, and there's a whole lotta colonialism going on. But things are also super trippy and expansive. Cities are floating, hallucinogenic mushrooms are in the water supply, and Monteczuma is absolutely rockin' it. I normally have a somewhat difficult time reading books without quotation marks for dialogue and You Dreamed of Empires was no exception to this, but GOD DANG this book rules so much.
Gosh but this was an intriguing journey. It kind of reminds me of the kinds of daydreams a person can come up with when they???re REALLY focused on an idea. I don???t know if this is something other people do, but there are people (myself included) who can build out entire scenarios in their heads and just play them out from all angles, from the perspective of all the characters, with all the possible outcomes that occurs to the daydreamer. This book feels like a very refined version of that.
But with that being said: the dreamlike narrative is a result of the deliberately Borgesian thrust of the narrative. Because that???s what this is, at its core: a Borgesian take on a very specific historical event. There???s no certainties here, no hard, specific truths; it forces the reader to question the relationship between ???fact??? and ???fiction??? and address the fluidity and gray areas between the two. This story is a labyrinth, and the reader must navigate the labyrinth and meditate upon the story being told.
Another way to look at this story is that it???s a reclamation, of sorts, of the historical narrative. In the dream that is this novel history is turned on its head, wrested away from the ???hard truths of reality??? as created and put forward by the colonizers, and instead put in the hands of the colonized. This feels extremely powerful and empowering in a way that can???t be replicated in straight historical fiction, and likely not even by alternate history narratives.
Overall this was an utterly fascinating read. It might not be the easiest to get through, since not everyone is into Borgesian-style stories, but the payoff for those who DO enjoy that kind of style and for those who stick through it is DEFINITELY worth it. The experience will also be very interesting for anyone who???s from a country with a history of colonization, especially Spanish colonization, since the narrative brings up interesting questions about the interplay between fact and fiction, and how storytelling highlights thee fluidity between the two.
