Álvaro Enrigue Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

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Publication Order of Anthologies

Alvaro Enrigue is a published author, literary critic, and editor.

Born in 1969 in Mexico City, Alvaro Enrigue has found himself spending much of life splitting his time between Mexico City and Washington D.C.

For some time, he was a professor of Literature at the Universidad Iberoamericana and studied Creative Writing at the University of Maryland. Since 1990 he has focused his efforts on dedicating himself to literary criticism and has written some novels along the way.

Alvaro has collaborated in magazines and newspapers in Mexico and Spain. Once he returned to Mexico, he spent a brief amount of time as literature editor of the Fondo de Cultura Economica before moving on and becoming part of the magazine Letras Libres.

Alvaro was awarded the Joaquin Mortiz Prize for his novel Death of an Installation Artist. His novel Sudden Death would go on to win the Heralde Novel Prize in 2013.

Sudden Death is a 2016 novel by Alvaro Enrigue. If you have been looking for something new to read, check this book out! This is an intriguing kaleidoscopic novel that is all about the clash of the empires and the ideas in the sixteenth century that continue to echo on and reverberate throughout the modern age, a story that might end up being unlike any other that you have ever read before because it is so original!

Sudden Death starts with a tennis match that is so important that it could end up deciding the fate of the world. The tennis match is not just taking place between nobodies, either. The Italian painter Caravaggio and the loutish Spanish poet Quevedo are about to fight it out in front of a crowd that includes Mary Magdalene, Galileo, and a generation of popes who would easily throw Europe into the flames.

In England, Anne Boleyn is beheaded by Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII. Her crafty executioner takes her legendary locks and transforms them into one of the most sought-after tennis balls of the time. Across the ocean all the way in Mexico, the last Aztec emperors are preoccupied playing their own games.

This is all going on at the same time that the conquistador Herman Cortes and his Mayan lover and translator La Malinche are scheming and conquering while fighting and having sex, not knowing that their domestic comedy has the potential to change the world and might do just exactly that. In a remote Mexican colony, a bishop is reading Utopia by Thomas More and thinks that instead of it being a parody it is instead a manual.

In this impressive novel that bends the mind, worlds come together, time coils, and traditions end up breaking down. There are executions and assassinations, utopias, hallucinogenic mushrooms, carnal liaisons, paper dramas, religious and artistic revolutions, love stories, and war stories.

A completely original voice and a postmodern visionary whose literary voice you can’t miss, Enrigue here tells about a huge adventure set at the dawn of the modern era in this brief but intense novel that will have you reading until the very end. Grab a copy today and see what you think!

You Dreamed of Empires is a 2024 novel by Alvaro Enrigue. If you are looking for a revelatory colonial revenge story that reimagines the fall of Tenochtitlan from a visionary Mexican author, you are in the right place!

It was the year 1519 and one morning conquistador Hernan Cortes came into the city of Tenochtitlan, in what is today known as Mexico City. Later that day he would be destined to make the acquaintance of the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two empires, languages, worlds, and possible futures.

Going along with Cortes was his nine captains, his troops, and his two translators. These include Friar Aguilar, who is a former slave with a taciturn nature, and Malinalli, a former princess who is strategic in nature.

Greeting them at a ceremonial welcome meal by the princess Atotoxli, sister and wife of Moctezuma, the Spanish nearly get their entrance to the city wrong. As they are waiting for their meeting with Moctezuma, they have no way of knowing that he is at a political, spiritual, and physical crossroads, and is getting through the day on hallucinogens and trying to get any kind of answer from the gods. Meanwhile, the Spanish are ensconced in the palace, which is fairly labyrinthine.

One of Cortes’s captains is someone named Jazmin Caldera, who is completely overwhelmed by the grandeur of the city. He starts thinking and begins questioning how easily they were welcomed into the city. He wonders what the odds are of them getting out alive much less conquering the empire too.

This creative novel brings Tenochtitlan at its height to life and reimagines its destiny. Alvaro Enrigue is original and sets afire this moment of conquest and begins turning it into a moment of revolution in a novel that is electric and completely original. Pick up a copy to see what happens and to take in this unique novel for yourself!