Abstract
A *New York Times* Top Ten Book of 2024 • A *New York Public Library* Top Ten Book of the Year. “Short, strange, spiky and sublime.” —Dwight Garner, *New York Times* “Funny, ghastly, eye-opening, marvelous.” —*Wall Street Journal*. From the visionary author of *Sudden Death*, a hallucinatory, revelatory colonial revenge story. One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés enters the city of Tenochtitlan—today's Mexico City. Later that day, he will meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.