Mexica

The year is 1531. In a small hut on the slopes of the volcano Popocateptl, scholar and poet Alvaro de Sevilla reflects on his extraordinary life. For Alvaro was one of the small army of conquistadors who, some years earlier, set out to conquer an empire. Hernando Cortes was proclaimed a reincarnation of the god Quetzacoatl shortly after his arrival in the New World, and he took advantage and forced his way to the capital city. There he met Montezuma, the Aztec Emperor, who at first welcomed the conquistadors to his city, showering them with gold. But it was an encounter between two civilizations that could only end in chaos, death, and destruction. Published in Britain as a major historical novel, a best-seller in Spanish translation, MEXICA is the amazing full true story of Hernando Cortes’ conquest of Mexico, told in depth as only a novel could tell it--from both the Spanish and Aztec points of view, by Cortes, by Montezuma and by the only character in the novel who is not a real historical character, Alvaro de Sevilla, a secret Jew who presents yet a third and passionately neutral point of view. A novel that restored their own true name, Mexica, to the so-called “Aztecs” (an insult meaning “barbarians from nowhere” in Nahuatl) in Mexico.