#Álvaro enrigue

[date-prisa-estamos-leyendo]

Y si alguien vuelve a decir la palabra hormiga en este imperio, dijo el huei tlatoani mientras se levantaba del trono de Axayácatl y se sacudía la capa, lo matas, pero antes le recuerdas que aunque la hormiga no hable, al final siempre señala el camino.

Tu sueño imperios han sido, Álvaro Enrigue.

[jacobwren]

"as i write, i don't know what this book is about. it's not exactly about a tennis match. nor is it a book about the slow and mysterious integration of america into what we call "the western world" -- an outrageous misapprehension, since from the american perspective, europe is the east. maybe it's just a book about how to write this book; maybe that's what all books are about. a book with a lot of back and forth, like a game of tennis. it isn't a book about caravaggio or quevedo, though caravaggio and quevedo are in the book, as are cortés and cuauhtémoc, and galileo and pius iv. gigantic individuals facing off. all fucking, getting drunk, gambling in the void. novels demolish monuments because all novels, even the most chaste, are a tiny bit pornographic. nor is it a book about the birth of tennis as a popular sport, though it definitely has its roots in extensive research i conducted on the subject with a grant at the new york public library. i embarked on the research after mulling over the discovery of a fascinating bit of information: the first truly modern painter in history was also a great tennis player and a murderer. our brother. nor is it a book about the counter-reformation, but it takes place in a time that now goes by that name, which is why it's a book that features twisted and bloodthirsty priests, sex addict priests who fucked children for sport, thieving priests who obscenely swelled their coffers with the tithing and alms of poor all over the world. priests who were swine. ...i don't know what this book is about. i know that as i wrote it i was angry because the bad guys always win. maybe all books are written simply because in every game the bad guys have the advantage and that is beyond bearing." – Álvaro Enrigue, Sudden Death (Translated by Natasha Wimmer) 

[philosophika]

Books of the Week

Representations of the Intellectual by Edward W. Said ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

*I only share 4 and 5-star books

[bookcoversonly]

Title: You Dreamed of Empires | Author: Álvaro Enrigue | Publisher: Riverhead (2024)

[judgingbooksbycovers]

Sudden Death: A Novel

By Álvaro Enrigue.

[haveyoureadthispoll]

From a visionary Mexican author, a hallucinatory, revelatory, colonial revenge story that reimagines the fall of Tenochtitlan. One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés entered the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he would meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures. Cortés was accompanied by his nine captains, his troops, and his two translators: Friar Aguilar, a taciturn, former slave, and Malinalli, a strategic, former princess. Greeted at a ceremonial welcome meal by the steely princess Atotoxli, sister and wife of Moctezuma, the Spanish nearly bungle their entrance to the city. As they await their meeting with Moctezuma – who is at a political, spiritual, and physical crossroads, and relies on hallucinogens to get himself through the day and in quest for any kind of answer from the gods – the Spanish are ensconced in the labyrinthine palace. Soon, one of Cortés’s captains, Jazmín Caldera, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the city, begins to question the ease with which they were welcomed into the city, and wonders at the risks of getting out alive, much less conquering the empire. You Dreamed of Empires brings to life Tenochtitlan at its height, and reimagines its destiny. The incomparably original Alvaro Enrigue sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution, a restitutive, fantastical counter-attack, in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream.

[4setsofcorsets]

Coworker: what’s your book about?

Me: a 16th century tennis match that didn’t happen and is an allegory for the changing shape of political power

Coworker: so do you….do light reading?

Me: Caravaggio’s in it!!!

[hedgehog-moss]

hi! Just wanted to ask what you’ve been reading lately? I love seeing your book recs! Also what are some of your favorite books ?

Hi :) I've read some disappointing stuff lately, so I decided to start two books from my to-read list that felt like safe bets—Samantha Shannon's A Day of Fallen Night and Elsa Morante's Lies and Sorcery. I'm enjoying both so far!

I've read interesting nonfiction this year—Empire of Pain, about the Sackler family; Erich Schwartzel's Red Carpet about the role of the movie business in cultural hegemony; and Laure Hillerin's biography of the Countess Greffulhe, who was a fascinating woman. She was the real-life model behind Proust's Duchess de Guermantes character, and a really influential figure in the arts & sciences in the early 1900s—she financed the first productions of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, frequented Rodin's studio, helped Marie Curie find the funds to start her Radium Institute... It was a good read. I also read a biography of Anne Perry by Peter Graham, which was so-so—the story of the murder is morbidly fascinating but the way it was told had too many trivial details and not enough depth.

Worst nonfiction books of the year so far were Niall Ferguson's Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe which didn't seem to have any point to make, and François-Guillaume Lorrain's Scarlett which was marketed as a fascinating new look into the making of Gone With the Wind but actually the author just watched his DVD's behind-the-scenes bonus content and diluted it into 300+ pages of rehashed anecdotes, it was so pointless. I found it on the "Vos libraires vous recommandent !" shelf and now I feel betrayed by that bookshop.

As for fiction, I've enjoyed Ira Levin's A Kiss Before Dying, it felt very dated in a fun way, everything about it felt intensely 1950s. Was very disappointed by Silvia Avallone's Acciaio, I'd heard good things about it but it was so joyless and meh. Álvaro Enrigue's Ahora me rindo y eso es todo was a bit disappointing in the second half, but the first half was good so I'll try other books of his. Pierre Lemaitre's Miroir de nos peines was fun in an expected way—I mean those who enjoyed the beginning of his Au revoir là-haut trilogy will enjoy this one too as it's more of the same. And I also had a good time reading Catherynne Valente's Radiance— similarly if you already like her writing style you'll probably enjoy this book. (I was listening to this as I read it and it fit really well with the floaty-nostalgic-unearthly atmosphere of the book, it's always nice to accidentally find a good book-soundtrack that enhances the experience! Now I can never listen to it while reading again as it's too intertwined with that story.)

And I really liked Madame de Staël's Delphine but I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone, it's very 18th century (though it's from 1802). If you enjoy idle noblewomen writing each other 20-page-long letters in gorgeously long-winded 18th-century prose about how the Viscount of Something glanced at them from the other end of a salon and nothing else happened and now they're having agonies then you'll love this book, it's 900 pages of this. I can't get enough of it personally, and I found it hilarious that these aristocrats had such low-stakes problems considering the story starts in 1790. They didn't notice the Revolution, they were too busy writing tormented letters about extramarital glances.

Some books I've added to my kindle recently: Virginia Feito's Mrs. March, Simon Schama's Landscape & Memory (someone I follow on GR described it as "monstrously bloated" while the NYT blurb diplomatically calls it "a work of enormous scope" which made me laugh), Seyhmus Dagtekin's To the Spring, by Night, Margarita Liberaki's Three Summers, Maggie O'Farrell's The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Dawn Powell's A Time to Be Born.

This got long, sorry! You can have a look at my 5- and 4.5 star shelves on goodreads, for some of my favourite books of the past few years :)

[kammartinez]

What’s wrong, Little Cousin? asked the emperor, lifting her chin. He looked her in the eyes. Her own eyes widened; she had never seen the face of the man who had just sentenced her to death, and she imagined that her father, executed in the purges at the beginning of his reign, must have looked like the emperor. She replied with more sadness than anger: You don’t even know my name; we’ve lived in the same palace for twenty-three years, as long as I’ve been alive; you’re my uncle; your father is my grandfather; I’ve served you every meal for five years; you’re sending me to be executed and you don’t even know my name; I will rise like fog and no one will remember my passage through this world. The emperor turned his gaze back to his plate and reached for a tortilla. He rolled it and dipped it in the pipián. Little Cousin, he said. Her eyes grew even wider. Go now, he said, and tell them to execute you in public.

from You Dreamed of Empires, by Álvaro Enrigue, trans. Natasha Wimmer

[gennsoup]

her flesh was like the deep Antillean sea: it touched all worlds.

Álvaro Enrigue, You Dreamed of Empires

[kamreadsandrecs]

Seen from the twenty-first century—a century terrified by the finitude of the body—a temple like this is first and foremost an affront. For a sixteenth-century Spaniard, who had witnessed wars and autos-da-fé and seen the rebels of his time die, rot, and wither in cages hanging at the gates of cities, it would also have been astonishingly hygienic in its presentation of the macabre realities of life. The white floors; the skulls, bleached and bare. All sanctified by a tidy geometry. It wasn’t an edifying display of the suffering to which errors in conduct would lead, but a representation of things as they are: inside each of us is a skull, and that’s all that will be left of us when we’re gone; thanks for your participation.

from You Dreamed of Empires, by Álvaro Enrigue, trans. Natasha Wimmer

[date-prisa-estamos-leyendo]

Cuauhtémoc podía lidiar él solo con un pelotón de otomíes y conocía las catorce maneras de matar a un hombre sin usar un arma, pero era incapaz de entender que alguien llorara.

Tu sueño imperios han sido, Álvaro Enrigue.

[thesorcerersapprentice]

22.01.2024

Worldbuilding: For the past two weeks, I've been grappling with an issue in my worldbuilding that has been paralyzing all progress on the novel. To put it briefly, while I want the novel to address neo-colonialism, I don't want to locate the story in a region that resembles the location of neo-colonial powers in our real world, aka. the global north. This for two reasons: first, because I want to use the novel to highlight and celebrate the flora and fauna of my own home region, Colombia; and second, because I want to get away from the idea that the default setting for epic fantasy is a UK-inspired region á la Game of Thrones. However, setting a neo-colonial superpower in a region that closely resembles one that has suffered immensely from colonialism and neo-colonialism in our own world comes with its own issues. After all, isn't it a form of literary colonialism to elevate the region's aesthetics but obliterate the culture? But, then, what's the alternative? For a long time, I assumed I only had three options: either solve the issue by setting the entire story in regions that resemble the standard fantasy default and bypass the problem entirely, abandon the colonialism theme, or keep the global north/global south aesthetic divide we experience in real life, thus maintaining the global north inspired region as the superpower and the global south inspired region as the oppressed. All three options are, in my very humble opinion, a disappointment and fail to do justice to the story. That said, I think I may have discovered a possible fourth option that allows me to keep the superpower region resembling Colombia. Namely, I'm thinking that instead of basing the distinction in climate/geography on the different hemispheres (and sticking too close to our world), I can base them instead on the different altitudes of Colombia. There is a historical precedent for having the 2500-meter-above-sea-level mark be the colonial centre of operations, which would allow me to keep the Cloud Forest biome as the main setting and somewhat side-step the unfairness of it all (I hope?). It's also possible to create a racial distinction between the inhabitants of the different altitudes if, let's say, the 2500-meter altitude region has been conquered, the native people eradicated and replaced by the new arrivals. This would make them physically distinct from the inhabitants of the rest of the regions (á la US; for the below regions, maybe the colonizers took a more "Spanish Empire" route and mixed). Furthermore, if this same region then gains independence and establishes itself as a new superpower, oppressing the regions below, we also have neo-colonialism (also á la US). Maybe that can work?

Decided on Altaluna's Appearance: I couldn't really settle this until I'd settled on the updated worldbuilding (namely, decided the geography, the races, ethnicities, etc.). Since race plays a hand in galvanizing hostilities against Altaluna in the second and third acts, I needed to be certain that her appearance would satisfy the criteria of 'mestiza' within this universe.

Researched Colonialism: I read two books on the subject, Edward W. Said's Representations of the Intellectual and Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire. I also picked up a third book, You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, a reimagining of the meeting between the conquistador Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma in the city of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) where the tables are turned. My aim with Enrigue's book is to learn from what other people are doing with colonization in fiction today, especially as it pertains to South and Central America. I'm always up for recommendations if anyone has any!

Updated Writeblr Graphics: I was supposed to have this done by January 1st but I really didn't like the theme I'd come up with, so I remade everything to the tune of the new(ish) setting. Hope you like it!

REMINDERS

Answer pending asks. I am, as always, behind. My apologies to everyone who hasn't received a reply yet. I promise I'm working on it.

Publish Altaluna's profile... please? (I'm begging you, finish and publish it!)

Complete a full summary of at least one aspect of the reviewed worldbuilding (could be geography, history, whatever). Ideally, two.

In memory of my dear friend, Nicolás, who died two years ago last week. I miss you.

TAG LIST: (ask to be + or - ) @the-finch-address @fearofahumanplanet @winterninja-fr  @avrablake @outpost51 @d3mon-ology @hippiewrites @threeking @lexiklecksi @achilleanmafia

[desperatecheesecubes]

[amiguiz]

Álvaro Enrigue, en Tu sueño imperios han sido.

[ancruzans-blog]

Ahora me rindo y eso es todo, de Álvaro Enrigue,

“Al principio las cosas aparecen. La escritura es un gesto desafiante al que ya nos acostumbramos: donde no había nada, alguien pone algo y los demás lo vemos. Por ejemplo, la pradera: un territorio interminable de pastos altos. No hay árboles: los mata el viento, la molicie del verano, las nieves turbulentas del invierno”. Así comienza esta novela de Álvaro Enrigue, cuyo título, sacado de una…