Hernán Cortés meeting Moctezuma in 1519 holds some space in our North American imagination. Two trajectories of human development—long separated by time and distance—crossed in Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City. For many, it symbolizes the beginning of the end, the Old World commencing its dominion in the New World. Imagine the meeting: European steel and gunpowder entering the dominant empire in Mesoamerica. We can almost feel the tension five centuries later.

In You Dreamed of Empires, Álvaro Enrigue has a reimagining for the ages. Yes, it foretells the eventual clash between Spanish conquistadors and a sophisticated city. But most of the novel reads like the most awkward of weekend getaways between two groups of people trying to understand what in the blazes is going on. It’s often comedic, taking the reader on a delightful, almost hallucinogenic flight.

We first find Cortés and a few of his men as dinner guests of Moctezuma’s retinue. One conquistador, never having experienced the deliciousness of chocolate, wants to down the frothy cacao drink that was served. However, the Tenochtitlan priest seated next to him—”his teeth filed sharp as a cat’s”—has him more than a little unnerved. More than anything, it’s the nauseating stench of coagulated blood from the priest’s cape made of human skin.

The fact that the Spaniard is not eating his soup is becoming an issue. Moctezuma’s priests are whispering. Cortés shoots the soldier a reproachful look, like a parent silently scolding a child with a flash of the eyes: Eat! The soldier finally imbibes, prompting a comrade to raise his cup of chocolate at his countrymen, as if to say, “Looking good, Spain.”

Moctezuma leaves others to deal with the Spaniards. He’s deep within the palace complex, self-medicating with psychedelic mushrooms. His depressed malaise is crippling. He’s always having to solidify power and find opposing warriors to sacrifice in the temples. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. And it’s not as though the “testy gods” are appreciative, what with their “blithely doling out droughts, earthquakes, defeats, and invasions.” Now, here are these Spaniards, these “bearded ones.” So Moctezuma lies down. “The Silence his nap demanded was imperial.” All things within the palace become hushed. When he wakes, he rings a royal bell, its peal waking “a whole world” just before he returns to sleep.

The conquistadors are left to wander the impressive and disorienting palace complex. With its many canals, one soldier remarks that it’s like Venice. Another responds, “It’s like Venice, but in hell.” The palace is so silent and empty it feels as though they’re “strolling along the seafloor.” Every day is like a Sunday, says another. Meanwhile, the soldier charged with stabling the horses is having some difficulty in finding suitable accommodations. The problem, of course, is that horses are just as new to the area as the Spanish.

Are they guests, or are they prisoners? They don’t know. There is, nevertheless, the feeling that they are getting away with something. Could they ever get this close to the Spanish crown? Of course not. But look at them now, even if they do feel idiotic marching through this heat and humidity in helmets and breastplates. In fact, when comparing their attire with Moctezuma’s warriors’ headdresses representing their guardian animals, the Spanish crested helmets seem “about as majestic now as a bagpiper’s bonnet.”

Tlilpotonqui, the mayor of Tenochtitlan, at times comes across as an overworked concierge. When Moctezuma beacons, go he must. He’s had it up to here with everyone and everything. We can imagine him trying not to get caught rolling his eyes when has to listen to He Who Looses the Rain of Words and Governs the Songs Lest We Be Like the Flowers and Bees That Last But a Few Days sing—once again —the “interminable” Legend of the Suns.

Excessive rumination is not something that burdens Cortés. We know from history that Cortés was positively awful. And he’s dreadful here too. If there is one thing that burns inside Cortés, it’s his quest for gold. It’s purported that Cortés said to Moctezuma’s representatives, “I and my companions suffer from a disease of the heart which can be cured only with gold.”

Eventually, Moctezuma—fully sated on magic mushrooms—emerges. Here he is, the mighty ruler of the “fear-producing machine” that is Tenochtitlan. And what happens? He and one of his priests hear a T.Rex song from the 1970s and start dancing about.

Absurd? Yes, of course. But there’s Borgesian magical realism in play here, especially toward the end of the novel. If that’s not exactly your literary bag, perhaps it may help to know that this novel is rather svelte, coming in at just over 200 pages. And, really, when capturing the peculiarity of this time and place, magical realism offers its own illuminative qualities.

Cortés and his men weren’t the first Spaniards to reach Mesoamerica. It was already known among many Mesoamericans that these “foreigners were ordinary men, but when there were many of them they became terrifying.” So it’s no wonder that in Enrigue’s incantatory novel, he has Moctezuma asking Cortés to just stop, to join him, and to “dream now.” It all “doesn’t last, like flowers.”

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Reviewed by Jason Sullivan

In Crook Manifesto, the always excellent Colson Whitehead takes us back to the world he devised in his previous novel, Harlem Shuffle. Ray Carney still has his Harlem furniture store. Becoming more prosperous, he and his family have settled into an apartment on the coveted Strivers’ Row. We’re in the 1970s, where “the flamboyant quotient in Harlem” is high, filled with all sorts of “groovy plumage.”

But the New York of the 1970s is also one of decline, with “the apprehension that things were not as they had been and it would be a long time before they were right again.” In the decade of America’s Bicentennial, this current volatility seems fitting to Carney, where America is both “melting pot and powder keg.” And to Carney, the powder keg is besting any harmonious melting together. When it comes time for him to conjure up his Bicentennial furniture ad for the newspaper, he can’t think of anything jingoistic. He can think only of such cutting things as “200 years but it feels like more–Ask the Indians. This July 4th, Salute Truth, Justice & 3-Position Adjustable Recliners.”

Still, even though Carney tends to “weave private dread into the universal condition,” life is pretty good. He’s no longer a part of the secondary economy, where he helped fence (move) stolen goods. His underworld contacts have stepped back into the shadows, leaving Ray Carney to live the straight-and-narrow life.

That is until his teenage daughter wants tickets to see the Jackson 5 at Madison Square Garden. As any father will tell you, just about anything will be done to avoid disappointing your daughter. So as the concert date approaches, Carney does what he has to do to score tickets to the sold-out show: He steps back into the shadows.

Carney contacts Munson, a white cop who shakes down the neighborhood crooks. He’s a crook with a badge, a streetwise tough from Hell’s Kitchen who long ago realized he could work both sides of the law. He’ll get Carney those tickets, but Carney must go on a ride with him. And what a wild ride it is.

It’s an open question whether Carney was looking for an excuse to re-enter the underworld. Either way, he quickly realizes he’s made a big mistake. “Slip once and everybody is glad to help you slip hard. Crooked stays crooked and bent hates straight.” Munson’s world is collapsing, so he enlists Carney to act as wheelman on one final run of extortions.

Whitehead demonstrates why he’s won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, twice. He could be describing anything and I’m pretty sure I would be regaled. During moments of grand intensity, there’s still some observational levity that underscores the absurdity of what’s transpiring. For example, there’s the old-timer crook who forms perfectly articulated sentences even with an active cigarette affixed in his mouth. “Shakespeare monologues couldn’t budge it.” Soon after this thought, someone is shot three times. And on it goes.

There are quite a few recurring characters from Harlem Shuffle (such as Munson), most notably Pepper, an aging bruiser whose entire adult life has been one heist after another. (Note: Crook Manifesto can be read as a stand-alone novel.) When a blaxploitation shoot is set to be filmed in the neighborhood, Carney sees to it that Pepper works its security. To the taciturn Pepper, “filmmaking was a heist, same animal.” In fact, Pepper sees most human activity through a criminal’s lens. To wit: The men on the street signs didn’t get there “by being decent, that’s for damn sure.”

Whitehead is known for his meticulous research to set a scene. Pick any era, allow Whitehead some time to research it, and he’ll pen a story that will place you right in that period. In 1970s New York City, arson was ubiquitous. The reasons for it are varied, but we already know the drill: debilitated buildings being burned not only for insurance payouts but also for kickbacks to those who will choose just who in fact gets to rebuild them. It was common enough for some tenants to sleep with their shoes on. Then there were the willing arsonists, or “firebugs”—blokes who just wanted to see the world burn.

Pepper can be violent, but the crime he sees now goes beyond the pale. In addition to the wildness of repeated arsons, there’s such things as the mother of four who’s stabbed over a few dollars and a pastrami sandwich, and the Juilliard student who’s pushed onto the subway tracks. To Pepper, “a man has a hierarchy of crime, of what is morally acceptable and what is not, a crook manifesto, and those who subscribe to lesser codes are cockroaches.”

Nonetheless, both Carney and Pepper know that in a “city like this, it behooves you to embrace the… contradictions.” And, really, it’s not as though there was some “good old days of crime” epoch, even though it often feels like it, a wanting for it to be so. Take Alexander Oakes, a rising politician and a childhood friend of Carney’s wife, Elizabeth. Both Alexander and Elizabeth come from the monied Harlem community, with Alexander acting as an interlocutor between the old and new power structures. To Elizabeth’s father, Alexander “would have been his son-in-law if the world made any kind of sense, if Elizabeth had any sense.” Without giving anything away, Carney and Pepper learn how this other set operates, and, once again, it gets fierce.

The world—as it does—changes fast for Carney. His kids are growing, doing their own thing, and on their way to leaving. His wife has her own busy career. Other than an occasional meet-up with Pepper and a few others, he’s essentially a loner, with an uneasy foot in both the crooked and straight worlds. Things come back hard on Carney, leaving him somewhat bewildered and struggling with what he should be thinking about. He’s like the city where he lives. “The city is being tested. It was always being tested and emerging on the other side in a newer, stronger version for having been laid low.”

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Reviewed by Jason Sullivan