You Dreamed of Empires
A Novel
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF 2024
A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR
"Short, strange, spiky and sublime.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times
“Funny, ghastly, eye-opening, marvelous.” —Wall Street Journal
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…