Sudden Death

Written by Álvaro Enrigue

Narrated by Robert Fass

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 Cortes 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Feb 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781494587963

Álvaro Enrigue

Álvaro Enrigue (México, 1969) ganó el Premio de Primera Novela Joaquín Mortiz en 1996 con La muerte de un instalador. En Anagrama ha publicado Hipotermia: «Relatos de gran altura y fascinante originalidad» (J. A. Masoliver Ródenas, La Vanguardia); «No es uno de esos falsos libros de cuentos que circulan por ahí disfrazados de novelas, pero tampoco una novela convencional; es un libro anfibio por naturaleza» (Guadalupe Nettel, Lateral); Vidas perpendiculares: «Excelente novela... Creo que la estrategia narrativa de este inteligentísimo autor culmina en unas páginas de un poder arrasante» (Carlos Fuentes); Decencia: «Actualiza las novelas mexicanas de la Revolución y les devuelve una ambición no exenta de ironía y desencanto» (Patricio Pron, El País); «Una escritura que apunta a Jorge Luis Borges, a Roberto Bolaño, a Malcolm Lowry y a Carlos Fuentes, aunque la región de Enrigue nada tenga de transparente» (Mónica Maristain, Página/12); Muerte súbita (Premio Herralde de Novela 2013): «Espléndida novela para tiempos de crisis» (Jesús Ferrer, La Razón); «Una novela a la altura de su desmesurada ambición. Se le exige mucho al lector y, como compensación, se le da lo mucho que promete» (J. A. Masoliver Ródenas, La Vanguardia); «Es posible que sea también un divertimento histórico sobre hechos contados muy libremente y un ensayo ficción sobre en qué cosa se puede convertir algo tan moldeable como es la novela» (Ricardo Baixeras, El Periódico); Ahora me rindo y eso es todo: «Una obra ambiciosa, en la que se mezclan géneros diversos... Una novela total» (Diego Gándara, La Razón); «Una ambiciosa novela total» (Matías Néspolo, El Mundo); «A García Márquez y Carlos Fuentes les hubiera gustado este exuberante alumbramiento de fantasía, exploración y conocimiento» (Tino Pertierra, Mercurio), y el ensayo Valiente clase media. Dinero, letras y cursilería.

Reviews for Sudden Death

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A tour-de-force, expertly translated by Natasha Wimmer. But what is this story about? It's about tennis, most of all and also least of all, about royalty and the papacy, about Caravaggio and the Spanish conquest of the Americas. A summary of the book would run to almost the same length of the book itself, and so all I can do is to recommend you read it - you will not regret it.

[colligan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What an unusual, intelligent, funny, and memorable read. The author presents a story with multiple digressions which are so entertaining, they in no way distract from the larger story line. The author is disarming honest and consistently creative. A work not to be missed if the prospective reader is looking for something new, smart, and genre-bending.

[rocketjk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a fanciful, inventive novel by Mexican writer Alvaro Enrigue about the twin seismic events in Western history of the Counter Reformation that sought to crush Protestantism under the weight of Inquisition and expulsion and the destruction of the Aztec Empire by Hernan Cortes and creation of New Spain which brought new wealth to Europe. The narrative mostly jumps back and forth between two scenarios. First is a whimsically rendered tennis grudge match played between the Italian artist Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Quevedo. Much is made over the rules of early versions of tennis, the differences in the composition of the balls, as well as the symbolic (and invented) detail of four tennis balls filled with the hair of Anne Boleyn, shorn just before her execution. Second is the progress of Cortes and his relationship with Montezuma, whose world he is about to destroy. The tone of almost all of this is deceptively light, often played for laughs. But the veil is often pulled back, the smile shown to be the grin of a death's head. For both focus also spins out from the tennis game to show us that nobles and religious figures who sponsor and support both artists--and those figures' forebears--men who can at the same time appreciate a revolutionary use of lighting in a painting and condemn thousands and thousands of people to death via the headman's axe and the pyre. The Aztec culture is identified as tyrannical and murderous, and the conflict between Cortes and Montezuma as resulting in a sea of misery and blood. With all that being true, how to reflect accurately how delightful a reading experience I found this? Let's go back to the start and speak of a novel fanciful, inventive slyly humorous and inventive.

[kylekatz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

2019. I never would have suspected that I would lovea book about a tennis match between Caravaggio andan obscure Spanish poet in the 1500s; and Cortescolonizing South America, but it was so beautifully writtenthat it was a joy to read. There was sone bawdy, drunkengay sex too.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Carlo Borromeo annihilated the Renaissance by turning torture into the only way to practice Christianity. He was declared a saint the instant he died. Vasco de Quiroga saved a whole world single-handedly and died in 1565, and the process of his canonization has yet to begin. I don't know what this book is about. I know that as I wrote it I was angry because the bad guys always win. Maybe all books are written simply because in every game the bad guys have the advantage and that is too much to bear.Describing what Alvaro Enrigue's odd novel is about is a thankless task. After all, when the author himself admits to not knowing what the book is about, how can the hapless reader (and I was very hapless) hope to write a tidy review? Sudden Death is structured around a sixteenth century tennis game between the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo and the Italian artist Caravaggio. The novel ranges back and forth in time, from Hernán Cortés and the conquest of the Aztec kingdom to the Renaissance, amplified by comments and asides from the author, himself. There are tidbits on the history of tennis, a ton of history unfamiliar to this American reader and character studies of de Quevedo and Caravaggio. It's all very fabulous and unsettling. It took me a while to settle into the rhythms and frenetic pace of this novel, but once I was there, I enjoyed it tremendously. It's a profane and heretical romp that leaves no historical figure unscathed. I had no doubt of Enrique's fierce wit or deep knowledge of the people and times he was writing about. The popes of the Counter-Reformation were serious men, intent on their work, with little trace of worldliness. They put people to death in volume, preferably slowly and before an audience, but always after a trial. They were thoroughly nepotistic and they trafficked in influence as readily as one wipes one's nose on a cold day, but they had good reason: only family could be trusted, because if a pope left a flank exposed, any subordinate would slit his throat without trial. They had no mistresses or children; they wore sackcloth under their vestments; they smelled bad. They were great builders and tirelessly checked to see that not a single breast appeared in a single painting in any house of worship. They believed in what they did.

[asxz-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Super weird, but always entertaining. Not since reading American Tabloid by james Ellroy have I been forced to Google so many of the characters in a novel to discover if they were real or not. The storytelling is a little stop-start and the timeline is utterly jumbled, which can be challenging, but the overall effect s perfectly charming. There is also some remarkable breaking of the fourth wall by the novelist which emphasized the playfulness of the whole thing. Uncategorizable, but a delight nonetheless.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Rome, 1599. The painter Caravaggio and the poet Francisco de Quevedo are playing three sets of real tennis as a result of a challenge issued for reasons neither can quite recall, which must have had something to do with the number of bottles of grappa consumed last night. Their seconds are a well-known Pisan mathematician(!) and the Duke of Osuna, respectively, and the spectators in the gallery include some Roman low-life figures who have served as models for Caravaggio's most famous canvases. That's the sort of premise for an historical novel that is hard to resist in anyone's hands, and it only gets more intriguing when we discover that Enrigue is not only telling us about the match and the players, but also brings in a lot of background about the cultural history of ball-games (there are a lot of balls in this book: knowing the way Spanish idiom works, you can be sure that not all of them are going to be the sort used in games) and a parallel story about Hernan Cortés and the conquest of Mexico. And a few other things...This isn't a book you can sum up easily, and Enrigue clearly doesn't want it to be something you can reduce to a single key idea. The idea he playfully suggests when he asks himself what the book is all about, some 3/4 of the way in, is that history is all about the bad guys winning, but I don't think we're meant to take this as limiting. In many ways, the book reminded me of the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier and his theory that the baroque way of seeing the world was only made possible by European contact with America: Enrigue also wants us to see the possible Mexican influences on Caravaggio's painting (and remind us that the Mexicans also had their own ball-game rituals...). Fun, and definitely a book to keep your mind agile, which I really enjoyed despite my normal antipathy to ball games of all kinds. I suspect that the real-life Quevedo, combative though he was, would have been somewhat averse to ball games too, with his notorious short sight and bad leg. But that's probably something we have to allow Enrigue under the heading of poetic licence.I'm the sort of person who has trouble remembering the rules of modern lawn tennis; 16th century real tennis is infinitely more confusing, especially since the usual terminology of the game as played at Hampton Court or in Merton Street is mostly derived from obsolete French words, not always a good basis for following blow-by-blow descriptions in Spanish, but that doesn't really seem to matter much. This isn't a book about who wins and who loses, at that level.

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Start with a tennis match played at the end of the 16th century. Back when tennis was a very different game. But the intent was still the same — to win. On this occasion the competitors, the artist Caravaggio and the poet Francisco de Quevedo, are playing in lieu of fighting a duel. Or maybe this is still a duel because it looks as though the match will be the death of at least one of them. Structured around the games of a three-set match, the novel ranges far and wide. As far as the conquest of Mexico, the beheading of Anne Boleyn, the tension between the Renaissance and the emerging Baroque, across genders, sexual orientations, languages, political maneuverings, and whatever it is that triggers Caravaggio’s turn to iridescence in his paintings. And throughout, hovering, the intrusive voice of the author, referencing his research, his exchanges with his publishing house, and his considerations on the significance of linguistic and stylistic flourishes.In the hands of a lesser author, this might have been a recipe for disaster. But Álvaro Enrigue is clearly a master. He deftly handles the many balls that he has placed in the air, juggling them with ease, and turning even the most sceptical reader into a believer. An impressive feat, surely. And highly recommended.

[carlitabay · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I had a tough time getting through this book. So much of it was so crude, vulgar and sexist. There were a lot of historical details to look up and I did learn quite a bit about Caravaggio and Quevedo but I'm not sure which are historically accurate and which are just the author's imagination. I felt lost a lot and that tennis match was interminable! I feel it is much too difficult to listen to the audiobook but that is available. Perhaps if I read it again I would get more out of it but I know I won't do it!

[bodagirl · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

"As I write, I don;t know what this book is about. It's not exactly a tennis match. Nor is it a book about the slow and mysterious integration of America into what we call "the Western world" ... Maybe it's just a book about how to write this book; maybe that's what all books are about. A book with a lot of back-and-forth, like a game of tennis." (pp. 203 - 204)This quote sums up the book pretty well, it's a mash up of narrative scenes set in 16th century Italy where a tennis match is taking place between the Italian artist Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Quevedo and scenes set in New Spain between Cortes and Cuauhtemoc, which are then intermixed with excerpt from Renaissance texts describing tennis and other expositional passages on contemporary events. Not my cup of tea.Popsugar 2016 Reading Challenge | Task 6: A book translated into English

[dreesie-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"As I write, I don't know what this book is about", p. 203.I don't really know either, but I don't feel bad about it after reading that.I learned a lot about random things: real tennis, 16th century Popes and bishop and cardinals, Mexican featherwork, Caravaggio, Cortes. Thanks you google and wikipedia for being there for me as I read. Mostly I guess the book is about various people in the 16th century. Is the tennis game an allegory? I have no idea, I am not good with allegories. What does this book mean? I have no idea.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is perhaps one of the most unusual books I have ever read. The setting is a tennis match between Italian painter Caravaggio and Spanish poet Quevedo. The game is being played with tennis balls made of Anne Boleyn's hair. The audience is filled with all sorts of persons, including Mary Magdalene, who is a bit out of her historical placement. Not all of the novel occurs at the match. We gain insights into the careers of both men. We are exposed to a dialogue between Enrigue and his publisher. Enrigue even admits he doesn't know what the novel is about in one place toward then end. Besides seeming to bounce from one thing to another, much as a ball does in a game of tennis, parts of the novel seem to work together. It is perhaps a bit more bawdy than my comfort level. Is Enrigue a genius and master of the novel, or is he a failure? Ultimately that will be for each reader to decide for himself. Opinions will be diverse. I did not find the novel to be one that could not be put down, but I did not dread resuming it either. My curiosity about where the author was going with the story kept me interested.