The theme for my ‘serious’ book club is ‘Translation’. I already had this in my pile, it was recommended in a list somewhere.
Here’s the blurb …
One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés entered the floating 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.
Clearly both the Spanish and the Mexicans (Aztecs?) are blood thirsty people. There was human sacrifice, the rending of humans into fat to polish boots, and capital punishments (‘Take yourself to the palace guards and tell them to kill you privately’). There wasn’t a sympathetic character – except, maybe, Atotoxli, or Caldera.
The settings were magnificent, and the characterisations were great – the conversations with everyone trying not to say anything or saying the truth but with a double meaning
As the emperor bade him farewell, still in Greek, he said he’d been told that Cortés had been to the temple with his men and it hadn’t gone well; just now he was busy with the Tlaxcalteca in Iztapalapa and the Texcoca in the middle of a civil war, but in two or three days they would go together to the temple so that Cortés could see the house of the emperor’s gods and the Caxtilteca would be treated as his guests deserved.
And what do they deserve?
It has a very fable, mythic feel to it. And the ending with the hallucinogens, what’s true what’s not? Is there a blue person?
And I researched the different characters and Tenochtitlan, so I feel that I have learnt something as well.