Sudden Death, Alvaro Enrigue
Sudden Death, Alvaro Enrigue
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Sudden Death

Author: Álvaro Enrigue

Narrator: Robert Fass

Unabridged: 6 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/09/2016

Synopsis

Sudden Death begins with a brutal tennis match that could decide the fate of the world. The bawdy Italian painter Caravaggio and the loutish Spanish poet Quevedo battle it out before a crowd that includes Galileo, Mary Magdalene, and a generation of popes who would throw Europe into the flames. In England, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII behead Anne Boleyn, and her crafty executioner transforms her legendary locks into the most sought-after tennis balls of the time. Across the ocean in Mexico, conquistador Hernán Cortés and his Mayan translator and lover, La Malinche, scheme and conquer, not knowing that their domestic comedy will change the world. And in a remote Mexican colony a bishop reads Thomas More's Utopia and thinks that instead of a parody, it's a manual.

In this mind-bending, prismatic novel, worlds collide, time coils, traditions break down. There are assassinations and executions, hallucinogenic mushrooms, utopias, carnal liaisons and papal dramas, artistic and religious revolutions, love stories and war stories. A dazzlingly original voice and a postmodern visionary, Álvaro Enrigue tells a grand adventure of the dawn of the modern era in this short, powerful punch of a novel.

About Álvaro Enrigue

Álvaro Enrigue was a Cullman Center Fellow and a fellow at the Princeton University Program in Latin American Studies. He has taught at New York University, Princeton University, the University of Maryland, and Columbia University. His novel Sudden Death-his first translated into English-was awarded the prestigious Herralde Prize in Spain, the Elena Poniatowska International Novel Award in Mexico, and the Barcelona Prize for Fiction, and has been translated into many languages. Álvaro was born in Mexico and lives in New York City.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim on September 14, 2020

Sudden Death by Alvaro Enrigue A book that’s hard to classify but I think it’s mostly a historical novel told in vignettes more-or-less tied in with the history of early tennis. Mostly the time frame is during the Renaissance, lets say the 1400’s and 1500’s, and the counter-reformation of the mid-150......more

Goodreads review by Douglas on January 31, 2016

This is the best book I've read in years. An indictment, history, and hope. Caravaggio in a tennis match with a Spanish poet. A tennis ball made from Anne Boleyn's hair. The savage diplomacy of Hernán Cortés. A mitre of feathers for the Pope made by the recently conquered natives of the Americas. Th......more

Goodreads review by Lee on March 01, 2016

I'm happy to have had the opportunity to read this in advance and interview the author. Generally, it's a great, beguiling book -- like a mystery novel, its far-flung parts come together over time via the life-changing magic of an assertion of associative intelligence. (The author also states what's......more

Goodreads review by Enrique on December 10, 2023

Propuesta tan loca y arriesgada como brillante. Bien por Álvaro Enrigue, ya he descubierto su calidad. Libro trabajadísimo y bien documentado. La duda que me cabe por parte del autor es: como es posible que teniendo tanto trabajo de zapa detrás como explicaba antes, ¿como luego tiene los arrestos suf......more

Goodreads review by Lark on January 30, 2019

The novel begins by telling you nothing in it is true: the only real things in a novel are the sequences of letters, words, and sentences that make it up, and the paper on which they're printed. But what follows is told in a tone that mimics the tone of a popular history book. Never mind that the his......more

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