The Fair God

The conquest of Mexico from the Aztec side: Montezuma's court, the omens, and the strangers coming up from the coast. Wallace wrote it before Ben-Hur, over thirty years, and it was the book he said he cared most about - the first American novel to treat the Aztecs as a civilisation rather than an obstacle. Thirty-seven plates of lakes, rivers and water views, from Altdorfer to Munch, run alongside the story of a city built on a lake.