Sudden Death

by Álvaro Enrigue

Relaxed to the point of corruption with his friends, implacable in the pursuit of his enemies, charming even when issuing death sentences, Giovanni Angelo Medici was the key figure in the transition to the Counter-Reformation and its splendid Baroque art.

Moctezuma’s grand fuck-up – the mistake that changed the world – was not having killed them when they first disembarked, before they were of any consequence.

Drunks and children urinate with the same glorious urgency: when they have to go, they have to go with desperate seriousness. And they pee profusely and noisily, in a foamy, vast and happy way.