Empire and Story

After reading:

You Dreamed of Empires, Álvaro Enrigue. Translated by Natasha Wimmer, Riverhead Books, New York, 2024.

This novel is two parts historical fabulation and one part magical realism. Of these ingredients, I found the former more compelling. The author imagines the court of Moctezuma II as the empire encounters what would become European colonialism. The portrayal of Moctezuma’s palace leans a little bit too hard on some tropes of the exotic and has notes of The Heart of Darkness, but, nonetheless, does the work of reminding the reader that empires are empires and emperors the same.

The book struggles, though, with some of the basics of story telling. Weirdly, the lead characters of the fabulation (Cortés and Moctezuma) are underdeveloped. The characters that receive the most attention are supporting roles–Moctezuma’s sister/wife (Atotoxtli) and Moctezuma’s chief of staff (Tlilpotonqui, the mayor of Tenochtitlan). The reader learns more about these two people and their fears, loves, and motivations while others are distant caricatures.

The magical realism and metafiction appears in the last third of the book. I don’t think it works. It solves some of the puzzle the author has for how to find an exit, but it doesn’t contribute to a whole. (The sudden shift in narration and direct address to the reader is both jarring and mechanical.)

I read this book after asking a younger person working in a small bookstore to pick something they thought I’d probably never choose if left to my own impulses. I’d like to thank them for picking correctly. I’d also like to confirm that my regular snobbishness is still intact. The book was “worth it” for the moment to imagine what was, but (like most books) it will be unlikely to find readers in the next generation.