Álvaro Enrigue – författare

A woman’s desperate flight from an Apache raid unfolds into a sweeping tale of the Mexico–US border wars.Now I Surrender is the epic, darkly funny and action-packed story of the legendary Apache warrior Geronimo and how the American West was 'won'.'Álvaro Enrigue's one of the best we have, and he’s not done pushing against conventions' NEW YORK TIMES'An impassioned anti-imperialist lament, a gripping alt-western' TLSIn the contested borderlands between Mexico and the United States, a Mexican woman flees into the desert after a devastating raid on her dead husband’s ranch. Meanwhile, a lieutenant colonel of the fledgling Republic, sent in pursuit of cattle rustlers, will soon discover he’s on the trail of a more dramatic abduction.Decades later, with political ambitions on the line, the American and Mexican militaries try to manoeuvre Geronimo, the most legendary of Apache warriors, into surrender. And in our own day, a family travels through the region in search of a truer version of the past.Now I Surrender is Álvaro Enrigue’s most expansive and impassioned novel yet. Part epic, part alt-Western, it weaves past and present, myth and history, into a searing elegy for a way of life that was an incarnation of true liberty – that still sparks in us the thrill of almost unimaginable freedom.Translated by Natasha Wimmer'Enrigue is an erudite, charismatic raconteur' THE ATLANTIC'A moving and complex love letter to Mexico... a slice of bloody American history with a timely edge' LOS ANGELES TIMES

'Glorious' New York Times'Endlessly inventive', Guardian, Best Books of 2016 'Wildly funny' Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies As Caravaggio, the libertine of Italy’s art world, and the loutish Spanish poet Quevedo aim to settle scores over the course of one brutal tennis match, the old European order edges closer to eruption.Across the ocean, in early sixteenth-century Mexico, the Aztec Empire is under the fatal grip of Hernán Cortés and his Mayan lover. While they scheme and conquer, fight and fuck, their domestic comedy will change the course of history, throwing the world – and Rome’s tennis match – into a mind-bending reverie of assassinations, executions, papal dramas, carnal liaisons and artistic revolution.Translated by Natasha Wimmer, the prize-winning translator of Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives and 2666.

'An Aztec West Wing' GUARDIAN'I was so impressed that I'm on my second read' TORREY PETERS'A triumph' FINANCIAL TIMES'Glorious' i-DA NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF 2024A GUARDIAN TOP FIVE TRANSLATED FICTION OF 2024In 1519, Conquistador Hernán Cortés and his troops ride into the floating city of Tenoxtitlan – today’s Mexico City – in this hallucinatory, revelatory, colonial revenge story.Invited to a ceremonial meal with the steely princess Atotoxtli, sister and wife of the emperor Moctezuma, the Spanish nearly bungle their entrance into the city and its labyrinthine palace. Soon, one of Cortés’s captains, Jazmín Caldera, begins to question the ease with which they were welcomed, and wonders at the risks of getting out alive, much less conquering the empire.Moctezuma himself is at a political, spiritual and physical crossroads, relying on hallucinogens in a quest for any kind of answer from the gods. When Cortés and Moctezuma meet, two worlds, empires, languages, and possible futures collide.You Dreamed of Empires brings to life Tenoxtitlan at its height – and reimagines its destiny.It sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution, in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream.Translated by Natasha Wimmer'A mischievous fantasy' TLSA NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY TOP TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

A collection of linked stories, "micro-novels," and vignettes spanning two centuries and multiple continents.