Malinche
A Novel
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4.0 • 10 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling author of Like Water for Chocolate, an extraordinary retelling of the passionate and tragic love affair during the conquest of the Aztecs between the conquistador Cortés and his interpreter, Malinalli.
A brilliant and multilingual woman, Malinalli has been reviled throughout Mexican history for the betrayal of her people—but her role was actually much more complex.
When a young Malinalli's tribe was conquered and enslaved by the Aztec warriors, her grandmother imparted to her that their founding forefather god, Quetzalcoatl, had abandoned them—but he was destined to return with the rising sun and save her tribe from captivity. When the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés first arrives, she—like many—believes he is the reincarnated forefather god of her tribe, here to free them.
With her talent for linguistics, Malinalli became an indespensable guide and translator for Cortés. In the hopes of freeing her people—and wanting to please this supposed god—she welcomes Cortés and assumes her new role as an interpreter for the Spanish. Throughout their travels and various conquests, Cortés and Malinalli gradually fall passionately in love. But it's not long before Malinalli realizes that Cortés's thirst for conquest is all too human, and that he is willing to destroy anyone, even his own men, and even their own love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Through the eyes of the historical native woman of the novel's title, Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate) reveals the defeat and destruction of Montezuma's 16th-century Mexicas empire at the hands of Spanish conquistador Hern n Cort s. Malinche, also called Malinalli, was sold into slavery as a child and later became "The Tongue," Cort s's interpreter and lover remembered by history as a traitor for her contribution to the brutal Spanish triumph. In her lyrical but flawed fifth novel, Esquivel details richly imagined complications for a woman trapped between the ancient Mexicas civilization and the Spaniards. Esquivel revels in descriptions of the role of ancient gods in native life and Malinalli's theological musings on the similarities between her belief system and Christianity. But what the book offers in anthropological specificity, it lacks in narrative immediacy, even while Esquivel also imagines Cort s's point of view. The author also packs the arc of Malinalli's life into a relatively short novel: she bears Cort s an illegitimate son, marries another Spaniard and has a daughter before her sad demise. The resulting disjointed storytelling gives short shrift to this complex heroine, a woman whose role in Mexican history is controversial to this day. 13-city author tour.
