RaveThe Rumpus\"As an author, Enrigue revels in physical action—scatological transgressions, sexual encounters, thwacking a tennis ball made from the hairs of a beheaded English queen head—but his focus in You Dreamed of Empires often makes uncomfortable bedfellows of the somatic with the psychological. But there’s a ruse: \'Before the Nap,\' the section where Enrigue spends a third of the book, uses grotesque visuals and hair-brained antics of Moctezuma and Cortés to distract from a broader tale of political intrigue ... So it’s satisfying when Enrigue delivers a blow. You Dreamed of Empires is, after all, a colonizer tale turned on its head, and in moments where Enrigue’s wit cuts with laughter, you can excuse him for wanting to land a few more punches on Cortéz’s legacy ... It is in their form—ravaging, dumb, dreamlike, free—that we can glean momentary order from Enrigue’s comic humor. It’s in navigating this esotery and symbolism that Enrigue is at his most expansive and striking ... In a letter to his translator for English-language readers, which provides a sort of foreword to the novel, Enrigue notes \'With age comes insecurity, and I spend more time revising then writing.\' You Dreamed of Empires comes across as a perfect manifestation of these anxieties, at first a slumberous text that, we find, can also dream.\
