Sudden Death

By: Álvaro Enrigue

Narrated by: Robert Fass

Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

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 Cortés 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.

©2013 Álvaro Enrigue. English translation copyright 2016 by Natasha Wimmer (P)2016 Tantor

Critic reviews

"[T]he reader can get lost in the profusion of historical figures." ( Publishers Weekly)

"[Narrator Robert Fass'] dry delivery style perfectly complements the whimsical nature of the story.... His approach allows the wonderfully eccentric text to speak for itself, enhanced by his authentic pronunciations as scenes cross international borders. This is a one-of-a-kind listen for people looking to try something a little different." ( AudioFile)

So erudite, so many good images and juxtapositions

Learned about tennis, Italian renaissance artists and colonization of Mexico. All in a fairly absorbing story. A very satisfying and at times tingling read if those subjects at all appeal to you. Listening for a second time now.

Not Sudden Enough

About 3/4 of the way through the book, the author concedes that he does not know where it is going. The reader has drawn that conclusion some while earlier. Nonetheless, it continues. Someone must’ve told me about the book because of my interest in Court tennis. The game served as the structure of the stories, but the author does not seem to have learned too much about it. The narrator does deserve praise because he had to do several different accents, which he did very well.