Álvaro Enrigue’s novel You Dreamed of Empires (2024) is a work of postmodern historical fiction that offers a hallucinatory reimagining of a pivotal moment in world history. The narrative unfolds over a single day, November 8, 1519, when the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his expedition first enter Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Mexica Empire. As the Spaniards are lodged in a palace and await an audience with Emperor Moctezuma, who is in the grip of a profound political and spiritual crisis, the novel explores the intense paranoia, cultural misunderstandings, and fragile power dynamics between the two civilizations. The book examines themes including The Contingency of Historical Events, Political Power as Theatrical Performance, and The Slippery Nature of Translation and Communication.

Enrigue is a celebrated Mexican author known for his playful and intellectually rigorous approach to historical events, similar to that of his previous novel, Sudden Death (2016), which won the prestigious Herralde Prize. In You Dreamed of Empires, he employs deliberate anachronisms, dark humor, and a Borgesian narrative structure to challenge the authority of traditional historical accounts. The novel was originally published in Spanish as Tu sueño imperios han sido in 2022. The 2024 English translation by Natasha Wimmer received widespread critical acclaim; it was named one of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year, longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.

This guide refers to the 2024 Riverhead Books hardcover edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of graphic violence, sexual violence, sexual content, substance use, cursing, and illness or death.

Plot Summary

Set in November 1519, the novel reimagines the day Spanish conquistadors entered the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan (modern-day Mexico City), a vast island metropolis built on a lake and the seat of the most powerful empire in the Americas. The story unfolds over a single day, blending historical events, fiction, and hallucinatory fantasy, and diverges sharply from the historical record in its final act.

The novel opens at a ceremonial lunch in the palace of Axayacatl, the dead father of the current emperor, Moctezuma. Captain Jazmín Caldera, the expedition’s principal investor, struggles to eat turkey broth while seated between two Mexica priests who smell strongly of blood from sacrificial rites. Hernán Cortés, the expedition’s captain general, quietly orders him to eat. Communication passes through a double translation chain: Malinalli (also called Marina or Malintzin), a young Nahua woman who speaks Nahuatl and Maya, translates for Gerónimo de Aguilar, a tattooed Spanish friar rescued from enslavement among the Maya, who then renders Maya into Castilian. Malinalli softens and fabricates translations to keep peace between the two sides. The novel explains the overlapping names for the people of Tenochtitlan. Moctezuma traces his ancestry to the Colhua people, whose rivalry with the Mexica people goes back centuries. Since the island city of Tenochtitlan is nominally the city of the Mexica, his status as a Colhua emperor is precarious. However, after many generations of intermixing, the distinction between Colhua and Mexica is largely theoretical. Coastal peoples, outsiders to Tenochtitlan, view everyone in the city as Colhua, while those in the nearby towns describe the island’s people as Mexica. The island’s inhabitants call themselves Tenochca—“the descendants of Tenoch” (16)—hence the name Tenochtitlan. The name “Aztec” was bestowed by 19th-century English historians “who really had no clue” (16).

The lunch is hosted by Princess Atotoxtli, Moctezuma’s sister and symbolic wife. When Cortés boasts about the large allied army of Tlaxcalteca, Huexotzinco, and Otomí warriors backing him, Atotoxtli challenges him, noting that the army scattered when Moctezuma permitted the Spaniards to enter. She singles out Caldera as the only trustworthy foreigner and demands he reveal where the Tlaxcalteca troops are. Cortés tells him to speak honestly, and Caldera admits they are camped in Iztapalapa, the city at the end of the lake causeway. Atotoxtli rises and leaves with her retinue.

The princess confronts Moctezuma in his private dining room, where the emperor eats alone, withdrawn from public life for months and increasingly reliant on hallucinogenic mushrooms. Moctezuma’s marriage to Atotoxtli is purely political, designed to stabilize the line of succession: His heir will not be his own son but his younger brother Cuitlahuac, followed by his nephew and son-in-law, the young general Cuauhtemoc. Atotoxtli’s real grievance is that Tlilpotonqui, the cihuacoatl (mayor) of Tenochtitlan and the empire’s second most powerful figure, lied to her about the Tlaxcalteca presence. Moctezuma dismisses her angrily, telling her that the empire is crumbling and threatening to have her killed if she causes a scandal, then weeps alone.

Through extended flashbacks, the novel fills in the day’s earlier events. That morning, the Spaniards crossed the Iztapalapa causeway into the city, passing floating neighborhoods called calpulli, each identifiable by the smell of its trade. At the flower-carpeted arch to the central islet, Tlilpotonqui welcomed them with elaborate courtesies. Moctezuma arrived late on a litter, distracted and disheveled. Cortés dropped to one knee, then tried to embrace the emperor, prompting Cuauhtemoc to lunge forward to kill him. Tlilpotonqui intervened, and the encounter ended quickly. The conquistadores were disappointed by the brevity of the ceremony, and the Mexica were confused that Moctezuma had finally decided to leave his chambers only to meet what they considered a pack of fools.

Parallel storylines develop through the afternoon. Malinalli’s backstory emerges: Born Tenepal, daughter of a Gulf Coast lord, she was sold into enslavement by her stepfather and passed through several courts before being given to the Spanish after the battle of Cintla. Aguilar discovered that she spoke both Nahuatl and Maya, making her the indispensable link in the translation chain. Cortés began a sexual relationship with her and had her baptized as Marina. To the Colhua, her archaic Nahuatl makes her sound like an emissary from the ancient past, and she becomes more famous than Cortés: The Mexica call him “El Malinche” (27)—the companion of Malintzin.

Meanwhile, Caldera and two companions search the palace for 27 horses that Badillo, Cortés’s stable hand, has led to an orchard deep in the building. In a meeting with Tlilpotonqui, Moctezuma reveals his true obsession: the horses. He allowed the Tlaxcalteca to remain in Iztapalapa because Cortés refused to enter without his allies, and a battle on the causeway would have sent the animals to the bottom of the lake.

Moctezuma takes his afternoon nap, a ritual so absolute that the entire city falls silent. During this period, Malinalli reveals to Cortés that she is learning Castilian. He orders her to hide this from Aguilar, then violently assaults her to reassert his dominance. Later, alone in the pool, Malinalli murmurs in her mother tongue, “Just wait, son of a bitch, just wait” (129). Caldera, meanwhile, shaves his beard, dons a Colhua breechcloth and mantle, and slips out of the palace disguised as a Colhua lord, drawn by a growing fascination with the Mexica world.

Tlilpotonqui faces a cascade of crises. The Council of four aged advisors has convened without authorization, summoned by Tlilpotonqui’s own son, Tlacaelel, on orders passed through Atotoxtli. The eldest councilor recites the entire Legend of the Suns, a long and tedious poem whose sole purpose is to remind Tlilpotonqui of the story of Quetzalcoatl’s ant, but Tlilpotonqui fails to pay attention. In a secret meeting, Atotoxtli, Tlilpotonqui, and Cuauhtemoc piece together Moctezuma’s hidden strategy. The call to arms was not to attack the Tlaxcalteca but to defend Tenochtitlan against Texcoco rebels. Moctezuma plans to offer the Tlaxcalteca lords Texcoco’s place in the Triple Alliance, the military confederation of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tacuba, in exchange for destroying the rebels. Atotoxtli insists to Tlilpotonqui that the story of the ant is a message from the emperor. She doesn’t know what it means, but Tlilpotonqui’s life depends on figuring it out. No one has seen Cuitlahuac recently, and his fate is uncertain; Atotoxtli believes he is dead, though Moctezuma flies into a rage whenever the name is raised.

A speculative passage, framed by the narrator’s admission that Jazmín Caldera is not a real historical figure. The narrator imagines what Caldera would have seen if he had existed and had entered the temple citadel: Caldera is struck by the geometrical perfection and symbolic significance of the sacred pyramids—structures shedding mass on the way to the divine. He is awed by the huey tzompantli (a great skull rack holding an estimated 40,000 skulls whose perpetual clatter fills the air), and the Tlatelolco market.

Cortés, prompted by a dream of Jesus, leads his captains to the Great Temple with a plan to destroy the Mexica idols and build a Christian chapel, polishing his boots with fat rendered from the corpses of lords he massacred at Cholula. His ascent coincides with Moctezuma’s underground approach through priestly tunnels, the emperor high on mushrooms. In the inner sanctum of Huitzilopochtli, the war god, priest and emperor experience hallucinatory visions, including an anachronistic image of the author writing this novel. Atotoxtli, meanwhile, visits Malinalli to offer Moctezuma’s protection and assess her loyalty, then marvels at the horses in the orchard, recognizing Moctezuma’s strategic genius: The animals represent the future. Recognizing Caldera making his way through the city, she sends an emissary to guide him into hiding. She expects that all the Spaniards will soon die, and she wants to keep him safe, as the Mexica will need someone to teach them how to handle the horses.

That evening, Tlilpotonqui escorts the Spaniards to the blue throne room under strict protocol: heads veiled, no one permitted to look at the emperor, no weapons. Moctezuma enters and promotes Tlilpotonqui to the Council while relieving him of the cihuacoatl position, which Tlacaelel will inherit. The emperor invites Cortés to share cactus-of-tongues, a powerful hallucinogen he claims enables them to speak directly without translators. Under the drug’s effects, Cortés delivers an impassioned account of Christianity while Moctezuma draws parallels to Colhua religion. Cortés then experiences a prophetic vision encompassing the entire future of Mexico: the fall of Tenochtitlan, colonial New Spain, independence, revolution, the modern republic, and finally this novel itself. He wakes convinced he will win.

The novel’s climax diverges from the historical record. Moctezuma says, “Now, Cuitlahuac” (218), and his supposedly missing brother, painted the same blue as the throne room wall and camouflaged against it, steps forward and kills Cortés. Moctezuma orders Cuauhtemoc to loose the Eagle Warriors and Cuitlahuac to secure the courtyard of the horses. He tells Tlilpotonqui the ant again should be killed, but he explains the meaning of the riddle: “the ant may not talk, but in the end it always shows the way” (219). The emperor crosses the deserted street alone, splashes his face in the sacred spring, and listens to the Eagle Warriors shouting as they run toward the center of the city.