When Malinalli, a member of the tribe conquered by the Aztec warriors, first meets Cortes, she — like many — believes that he is the reincarnated forefather god of her tribe. Naturally, she assumes that her task is to help Cortes destroy the Aztec empire and free her people. The two fall passionately in love, but Malinalli gradually comes to realize that Cortes's thirst for conquest is all too human. He is willing to destroy anyone, even his own men, even their own love.

Throughout Mexican history, Malinalli has been reviled for her betrayal of the Indian people. However, recent historical research has shown that her role was much more complex; she was the mediator between two cultures, Hispanic and Native American, and two languages, Spanish and Nahuatl.

Bursting with lyricism and vivid imagery, Malinche finally unveils the truth behind this legendary love affair.

"Through the eyes of the historical native woman of the novel's title, Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate) reveals the defeat and destruction of Montezuma's 16th-century Mexicas empire at the hands of Spanish conquistador Hernn Corts. Malinche, also called Malinalli, was sold into slavery as a child and later became 'The Tongue,' Corts's interpreter and lover — remembered by history as a traitor for her contribution to the brutal Spanish triumph. In her lyrical but flawed fifth novel, Esquivel details richly imagined complications for a woman trapped between the ancient Mexicas civilization and the Spaniards. Esquivel revels in descriptions of the role of ancient gods in native life and Malinalli's theological musings on the similarities between her belief system and Christianity. But what the book offers in anthropological specificity, it lacks in narrative immediacy, even while Esquivel also imagines Corts's point of view. The author also packs the arc of Malinalli's life into a relatively short novel: she bears Corts an illegitimate son, marries another Spaniard and has a daughter before her sad demise. The resulting disjointed storytelling gives short shrift to this complex heroine, a woman whose role in Mexican history is controversial to this day. 13-city author tour. (May)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"It ought to be difficult, if not impossible, to make the Spanish conquest of Mexico lyrical, but Laura Esquivel comes close in her fifth novel, 'Malinche.' This is not a good thing either for history or for literature.

Most readers will remember Esquivel for her first novel, Like 'Water for Chocolate,' the story of how a woman transforms heartbreak into culinary astonishments. That book... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) used recipes and magical realism to explore life in early 20th-century Mexico. In Esquivel's new book, the eponymous heroine encounters her share of heartbreaks, but there's little magical or realist about the process.

Mexican national memory hasn't been kind to La Malinche, the Mexica woman who came into the possession of Herman Cortes as a slave, learned Spanish and as 'The Tongue' — Cortes' translator — helped talk Montezuma out of an empire, with ghastly, near-genocidal results. She mediated between the Spaniards and the Mexica (Aztec) people whom Montezuma governed. She also bore Cortes a son, Martin — the first true mestizo Mexican, or at least the most famous one — before the conquistador married her off to a much nicer man named Juan Jaramillo, with whom, according to Esquivel's account, she had a daughter.

As far as I can tell — one of the many shortcomings of Esquivel's book is that it leaves the reader grasping for concrete details — Malinche was one of the names by which Cortes was sometimes known. It means something like captain, so the captain's translating mistress became La Malinche. Esquivel gives her the birth name of Malinalli, which refers to a sacred grass and also seems to have associations with death.

Esquivel deserves credit for attempting the difficult task of imagining herself into the skin and heart of a woman whom history has found it easy to scorn. Some revisionists have argued that La Malinche saved her people from total destruction because she gave Cortes the chance to negotiate (sometimes) with words instead of swords — not that he was afraid to use those.

It's unclear whether Esquivel shares this particular revisionist point of view, but then many things in this novel are unclear. We get a few scenes of pillage and massacre, fever dreams that interrupt the story that Esquivel really cares about: one woman's spiritual journey — to use a cliche that fits too well here.

On the positive side, the novelist treats her heroine with refreshing sympathy. How can you not feel for a 5-year-old girl whose mother, eager to remarry after the death of her first husband, gives her away to slave-traders? All the young Malinalli has to hold on to are memories of her grandmother, a loving woman rich in the spirituality of Mexica culture. The flashback scenes of Malinalli's time with her grandmother contain some lovely moments of Mexica lore: how to learn the ways of water, fire and stars in order to come closer to god in his many forms; how to use codices — stories in pictures — to train the mind and harness memory. But by the time Malinalli travels with Cortes to Tenochtitlan, Montezuma's great capital, her grandmother's gentle, indigenous lyricism has given way to self-aggrandizing, almost New Age escapism.

Take, for instance, the scene in which Malinalli makes a nighttime visit to the sacred plaza at the center of Tenochtitlan, not long after Cortes has taken control of the place. She stands in front of the Stone of the Sun and, instead of fretting about the end of civilization as she knows it, enjoys a moment of insight: 'The Sun, the Moon, she herself, and the Stone of the Sun created all that was unique and indivisible and at that moment she understood that the Stone was an image of the invisible, that it was a circle that represented not only the Sun and the Winds, the forces of creation, but the invisible at its center.' Too bad about the slaughters perpetrated by Cortes and his men. Such bloody episodes exist in this book mostly to trouble Malinalli's dreams.

Just as problematic is Malinalli's relationship with Cortes. It's rape as destiny. The conquistador strikes her as a short, hairy megalomaniac, but we're also told that she feels some dubious bond with him. In the plaza in Tenochtitlan, for instance, she ponders their experiences together: 'It was a confusing time, in which her time and Cortes' time were ineluctably interconnected, laced, tied together. ... It was an enforced union that she had not decided on but that seemed to mark her always.'

The Spanish encounter with Mexico was many things, but 'confusing'? I'm tempted to blame the translator for some of the novel's more unfortunate moments, such as Malinalli's realization that 'she was tired, extremely tired of Cortes and all his strategies.' But the problem surely goes deeper than diction in whatever language. For instance, in an early scene when the hirsute Spaniard 'takes' Malinalli for the first time — on a riverbank, no less — Esquivel tells us that the pair 'looked into each other's eyes and found their destiny and their inevitable union.' Are those literary terms for rape?

In its treatment of plot (sketchy) and character (sketchier) and its emphasis on wifty spirituality, 'Malinche' feels half thought out, its heroine an excuse for the author to indulge her meditations on pre-Columbian (or pre-Cortesian) folkways. Esquivel hints that Malinalli is a kind of Virgin of Guadalupe, a figure in whom the blood of warring races mingles together, the mother of the Mexico that will be born out of the clash of cultures. That's a fascinating idea, but in this book it's only an idea. The more Malinalli retreats from history into spirituality, the more she melds into the universe and the vaguer she becomes as a character — until she's lost entirely in the mists of myth. From conquistador's mouthpiece to author's is not a fate anyone should suffer.

Jennifer Howard, a former contributing editor of The Washington Post Book World, is a staff writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education." Reviewed by Jennifer Howard, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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"This novel is not as accessible as Esquivel's earlier work, and the quality of the prose is uneven, sometimes lyrical and sometimes stilted. Still, Esquivel's many fervent fans will be interested in her latest." Booklist

"Malinche (1505-29) is infamous in Mexican history and folklore as a traitor to her people....Esquivel puts her own twist on the story with her imagined life of a young woman sold into slavery by her own mother and subsequently caught between the worlds of Montezuma and the Spanish conquerors." Library Journal

"Esquivel is less interested in fleshing out the plot than in delineating the belief system of the pre-Aztec civilization, everything that happens to Malinalli is swathed in imagery and deep spiritual significance"." Kirkus Reviews

A major publishing event, from the international bestselling author of Like Water for Chocolate--an extraordinary new historical novel about the passionate and tragic love affair during the conquest of the Aztecs.

Laura Esquivel was born in Mexico City in 1950. Her first novel, Like Water for Chocolate, has sold more than four and a half million copies around the world and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year. She currently lives in Mexico.