November 8, 1519, was one of the more significant dates in world history, but one side of that day's events isn't as well known as the other, as Mexican author Álvaro Enrigue (Sudden Death) illustrates in You Dreamed of Empires, translated by Natasha Wimmer. In this playfully menacing novel, he reinterprets the events of 1519 through 1521, during which Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés completed a conquest of Mexico and brought about the end of the Aztec Empire. Enrigue's reimagining begins when Cortés and his entourage, fresh off victory in Cuba, arrive in Tenoxtitlan, the Aztec Empire capital in Mexico, at the palace of the emperor Moctezuma. Negotiations soon follow, but not before an elaborate meal with, among others, Princess Atotoxtli, "the emperor's sister but also his wife."
Enrigue's canny strategy is to focus not on the principals but on secondary figures. Atotoxtli is one of them, a wry presence who, when Moctezuma confides he doesn't want the Mexican people to think he's weak, replies that they already do, because he "let the Caxtilteca"--the Spaniards--"ally themselves with all your enemies." On the Spanish side is Jazmín Caldera, Cortés's third in command, who, in a wink to Jorge Luis Borges, gets lost along with two others in the labyrinth of corridors of Moctezuma's palace. Observing the proceedings is Badillo, "an extraordinary animal handler," who is Cortés's stable boy. Passages of dense historical detail may be tough going for some readers, but the frisson of intrigue Enrigue effortlessly builds through multilayered narratives and ingenious plotting never flags in this riveting, daring work. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer