Álvaro Enrigue Books in Order

Across Mexico, Washington, and more distant places and eras, bewildered characters struggle with desire, cultural misunderstandings, and self-destruction. These stories and vignettes examine the uneasy limits of identity through lives marked by absurdity and unexpected upheaval.

A fierce tennis match between Caravaggio and the poet Quevedo intersects with conquest in Mexico and upheaval in Europe. Their contest opens onto a shifting historical landscape where art, ambition, violence, and desire reshape the world.

When Cortés and his soldiers enter Tenochtitlan, their ceremonial welcome conceals uncertain motives and political danger. As Moctezuma wrestles with his own doubts, the meeting of two empires becomes a hallucinatory reimagining of conquest and resistance.

A woman's flight after an Apache raid unfolds into intertwined histories of the borderlands between Mexico and the United States. Soldiers, Geronimo, and a modern traveling family illuminate competing accounts of conquest, surrender, and freedom.