Book Discussion: Álvaro Enrigue’s Muerte Súbita (Sudden Death)

About

Muerte Súbita (Sudden Death) begins oddly enough: two murderers—the Italian painter Michaelangelo Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Queveda—play tennis with four balls made of the red “incendiary” braids of a beheaded Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII. Watching from the sidelines are Galileo, Mary Magdalene, and several popes. Puzzlingly complex, absurd, and wildly entertaining, this Baroque novel pictures the author’s birth country of Mexico, as “a third nation, blind to its own beauty, that no one has been able to understand.” About the writer: Álvaro Enrigue is a Mexican novelist, short-story writer, and essayist. For Muerte Súbita (Sudden Death), he was honored with the prestigious Herralde Prize in Spain, the Elena Poniatowska International Novel Award in Mexico, and the Barcelona Prize for Fiction. Enrigue holds a PhD from the University of Maryland and lives in New York. The book is available in Spanish (264 pages) and English (272 pages). Ten copies are available for free at the museum on a first-come, first-served basis.

Website: https://events.sjc.edu/event/book_discussion_alvaro_enrigues_muerte_subita_sudden_death