Daimón

Almost totally unknown in North America before the publication of his prizewinning novel, The Dogs of Paradise, in 1990, Abel Posse received the highest praise for his first book to appear in English. The Dogs of Paradise is about Columbus, and in Daimon, Posse continues his trilogy about the early encounters between Europeans and his native continent in a book about Lope de Aguirre, one of the most rapacious conquistadores. Aguirre was one of Pizarro's lieutenants in the conquest of Peru. At a critical moment on an expedition in the Amazon he threw over everything that was valuable to him, slaying his comrades (including his fifteen-year-old daughter), betraying his commander, his king, and even his God to establish "the first free territory of America," the Maranon Empire. From his jungle fastness Aguirre dreamed of seizing Peru, reconquering Spain, and taking over the world. Cruel, amoral, believing "solely in the will to power, the revels of war, the heat of delirium," Aguirre in real life was unable to realize his brutal ambitions. But in this brilliant reimagining of his story, we see an Aguirre who lived on after death, aging and suffering in the Eternal Return, with profound implications for both the Old World and the New. Baroque, erotic, surreal, and profoundly ironic, Daimon is fully the equal of Abel Posse's The Dogs of Paradise, which the San Francisco Chronicle described as "astonishing in its inventiveness, richness of historical detail, and vividness of description."