Description

‘With Red Smoking Mirror, Nick Hunt has created the love child of JG Ballard and Ursula K Le Guin’ – Joanna Pocock, author of Surrender

Shortlisted in the 2024 Edward Stanford Awards for the Viking Award for Fiction with a Sense of Place

The year is 1521 in the Mexica city of Tenochtitlan. Twenty-nine years earlier, Islamic Spain never fell to the Christians, and Andalus launched a voyage of discovery to the New Maghreb.

For two decades the Jewish merchant Eli Ben Abram, who led the first ships across the sea, has maintained a delicate peace in the Moorish enclave of Moctezuma’s breathtaking capital, assisted by his Nahua wife Malinala. But the emperor has been acting strangely, sacrifices are increasing at the temples, a mysterious sickness is spreading through the city, and there are rumours of a hostile army crossing the sea…

A bravura reimagining of an alternate history, Red Smoking Mirror is a richly written novel of love and fate, of how cultures co-operate and clash, and of how individuals can shape and are shaped by the times they live through.

Publisher Review

'A vivid, richly inhabited account which rings with authenticity, both in its detail and in its emotional impact' - Cynan Jones, author of Cove 'With Red Smoking Mirror, Nick Hunt has created the love child of JG Ballard and Ursula K Le Guin' - Joanna Pocock, author of Surrender Praise for Nick Hunt: 'Travel writing in excelsis' - Jan Morris 'Nick Hunt has written a glorious book, rich with insight and wit, about walking his way both across and into contemporary Europe' - Robert Macfarlane 'A thrilling and gorgeous tale, packed with meteorological wonder' - Amy Liptrot 'A beautiful, disquieting book' - William Atkins 'Nick Hunt's bold exploration of our hidden continent makes you fall in wonder with the Earth again. Passionate, learned, surprising and revelatory, this is a journey for our times' - Kapka Kassabova