Álvaro Enrigue and Percival Everett
In Conversation with author and book critic Anita Felicelli
Saturday, 7PM, May 18 // The Preserve
$10
You Dream of Empires, Álvaro Enrigue turns the historical novel upside down and inside-out, set in 1519, when the conquistador Hernán Cortés enters Tenochititlan (present-day Mexico City) to meet Moctezuma. In his new novel, James, Percival Everett rewrites Mark Twain’s notorious novel to let us hear the enslaved Jim’s point of view, finally giving “one of the noblest characters in American literature a novel worthy of him.” Both of these retellings offer remarkable revelations; funny and horrifying meditations on history real and imagined; as well as characters we think we know—shown in a radically new light.