Sudden Death: A Novel

Sudden Death: A Novel

"Splendid"Â â€”New York Times
"[A]Â novel without boundaries." â€”O, the Oprah Magazine
"Mind-bending."Â â€”Wall Street Journal

A daring, kaleidoscopic novel about the clash of empires and ideas, told through a tennis match in the sixteenth century between the radical Italian artist Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo, played with a ball made from the hair of the beheaded Anne Boleyn.

The poet and the painter battle it out in Rome before a crowd that includes Galileo, Mary Magdalene, and a generation of popes who would throw the world into flames. In England, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII execute Anne Boleyn, and her crafty executioner transforms her legendary locks into those most-sought-after tennis balls. Across the ocean in Mexico, the last Aztec emperors play their own games, as the conquistador HernÃ¡n CortÃ©s and his Mayan translator and lover, La Malinche, scheme and conquer, fight and f**k, not knowing that their domestic comedy will change the course of history. In a remote Mexican colony a bishop reads Thomas Moreâ€™s Utopia and thinks that itâ€™s a manual instead of a parody. And in todayâ€™s New York City, a man searches for answers to impossible questions, for a book that is both an archive and an oracle.

Ãlvaro Enrigueâ€™s mind-bending story features assassinations and executions, hallucinogenic mushrooms, bawdy criminals, carnal liaisons and papal schemes, artistic and religious revolutions, love and war. A blazingly original voice and a postmodern visionary, Enrigue tells the grand adventure of the dawn of the modern era, breaking down traditions and upending expectations, in this bold, powerful gut-punch of a novel.

Game, set, match.

â€œSudden DeathÂ is the best kind of puzzle, its elements so esoteric and wildly funny that readers will race through the book, wondering how Ãlvaro Enrigue will be able to pull a novel out of such an astonishing ball of string.Â But Enrigue absolutely does; and with brilliance and clarity and emotional warmth all the more powerful for its surreptitiousness.â€Â
â€”Lauren Groff,Â New York Times-bestselling author ofÂ Fates and Furies

"Engrossing... rich with Latin and European history."Â â€”The New Yorker

"[A] bawdy, often profane, sprawling, ambitious book that is as engaging as it is challenging.â€Â â€”Vogue

From the Hardcover edition.
Country USA
Manufacturer Riverhead Books
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2016-02-09
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Riverhead Books
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2016-02-09
Format	Kindle eBook

Sudden Death: A Novel

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