Pushing the Limits of Historical Fiction

"Enrigue's 'penchant for shooting the facts of history through the prism of the absurd' makes him singular-but it also puts him firmly in a long literary tradition. The book 'distills a byzantine swirl of historical events through the lives of a handful of very colorful characters,' intertwining several real and invented incidents with major moments in the Apache Wars, a series of skirmishes involving Native Americans, the U.S., and Mexico across the Southwest borderlands."

"American textbooks tend to boil the conflict down to the surrender of the Apache warrior Geronimo, depicting his resistance as a poignant speed bump on the road to westward expansion. What Enrigue describes instead is a multilateral conflict whose most tangible result was the erasure of a Native society. 'Enrigue is examining a rupture,' Miranda writes, and so he tears apart the veil of realism."

"In one chapter, we follow a ragtag Mexican posse featuring a zarzuela singer disguised as a nun; in another we witness Geronimo's anguish over what will become of his people; in still another, Enrigue himself appears, on a contemporary road trip with his fractious family to visit the memorial sites that inspired the novel."

Álvaro Enrigue's novel Now I Surrender exemplifies a literary approach that blends fantastical elements with historical reality. The book examines the Apache Wars through interconnected real and invented incidents, featuring colorful characters including a Mexican posse with a zarzuela singer disguised as a nun and Geronimo's personal anguish. Enrigue's method of filtering historical facts through absurdism effectively counters oversimplified American textbook accounts that reduce the conflict to Geronimo's surrender. Rather than depicting westward expansion as inevitable, the novel reveals the Apache Wars as a complex multilateral conflict resulting in the erasure of Native society. Enrigue even appears in the narrative during a contemporary family road trip visiting memorial sites that inspired the work.

Read at The Atlantic