About This Book
The prophecy is fulfilled. The fifth world has fallen. The sixth world is born, and only one man holds the secret of the late empire...
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.
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.
Norman Spinrad is the author of over twenty novels, including BUG JACK BARRON, THE IRON DREAM, CHILD OF FORTUNE, PICTURES AT 11, GREENHOUSE SUMMER, and THE DRUID KING. He has also published something like 60 short stories collected in half a dozen volumes. The novels and stories have been published in about 15 languages. His most recent novel length publication is HE WALKED AMONG US, published in April 2010 by Tor. He's written teleplays, including the classic Star Trek, "The Doomsday Machine," and two produced feature films DRUIDS and LA SIRENE ROUGE. He is a long time literary critic, sometime film critic, perpetual political analyst, and sometime songwriter. He's also briefly been a radio phone show host, has appeared as a vocal artist on three albums, and occasionally performs live. He's been a literary agent, and President of the Science Fiction Writers of America and World SF. He's posted 21 YouTube videos to date. He grew up in New York, has lived in Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, and Paris, and travelled widely in Europe and rather less so in Latin America, Asia, and Oceania.
