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Now I Surrender

A visionary Western from the author of You Dreamed of Empires

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Now I Surrender

By: Álvaro Enrigue, Natasha Wimmer - translator
Narrated by: Thom Rivera
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Once I moved like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all.

The darkly funny and action-packed story of Geronimo and how the American West was 'won'

A New York Times What to Read selection for 2026

In the contested borderlands between Mexico and the United States, a Mexican woman flees into the desert after a devastating raid on her dead husband’s ranch. Meanwhile, a lieutenant colonel of the fledgling Republic, sent in pursuit of cattle rustlers, will soon discover he’s on the trail of a more dramatic abduction.

Decades later, with political ambitions on the line, the American and Mexican militaries try to manoeuvre Geronimo, the most legendary of Apache warriors, into surrender. And in our own day, a family travels through the region in search of a truer version of the past.

Now I Surrender is Álvaro Enrigue’s most impassioned novel yet. Part epic, part alt-Western, it weaves past and present, myth and history, into a searing elegy for a way of life that was an incarnation of true liberty – that still sparks in us the thrill of almost unimaginable freedom.

© Álvaro Enrigue 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

 Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Science Fiction World Literature Latin American Mexico Funny Military Freedom
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Critic reviews

So original and funny… with Enrigue living between worlds—the worlds of the past and the present, but also of the real and the imagined
A baroque and semi-comic anti-Western... You can sense a bit of Bolaño in Enrigue: the postmodern playfulness, the cosmopolitanism, the historical conscience. Enrigue’s new one has a bit of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian... He’s one of the best we have, and he’s not done pushing against conventions
A thrillingly alive account… Enrigue recasts the so-called story of how the west was won, stripping it of the cultural shibboleths that have long dominated the discourse
By turns an impassioned anti-imperialist lament, a gripping alt-western, a meditation on human freedom, an autofictional travelogue... [Enrique] slowly binds the narrative threads tighter and tighter... revealing the pulsating truth at the heart of his book. For all that it might be the incarcerated Apaches who are at the sharp end of this tragedy, the forces that apparently necessitated their demise... have, Enrigue suggests, denied us all the chance of achieving the highest forms of human flourishing
Enrigue has a long career of writing brilliant and gripping literary accounts of Mexico’s history with a daring flair. His work is a moving and complex love letter to Mexico, mesmerizing anyone who has ever been awestruck by the country… It’s a slice of bloody American history with a timely edge
Offer[s] the satisfactions of Westerns, historical epics, and metafiction even as [Enrigue] overturns all three traditions... Enrigue is an erudite, charismatic raconteur... and his novel distills a byzantine swirl of historical events through the lives of a handful of very colorful characters (Carolina A Miranda)
The Mexican novelist Álvaro Enrigue has a flair for bringing historical figures to life in fresh, unforgettable ways... a celebration of Apache defiance and resistance
[A] masterpiece. . . A collage of archival research, field diaries, film criticism, travelogues, nature writing, and narrative history that blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction, Enrigue’s book accomplishes a nearly impossible feat: It succeeds equally well as a breathtaking historical novel and as a groundbreaking work of political theory. . . Against the savagery of imperialism, Now I Surrender offers the nobility of statelessness
A kind of cubist Western, snarling convenient cultural narratives from a dizzying array of eras and perspectives
Álvaro Enrigue is a contemporary master of historical fiction and his new book continues his complex explorations of colonialism in the Americas
All stars
Most relevant
Now I Surrender is a fascinating, if at times challenging, listen. The book weaves together three different narratives, all centred around the Apache people, Geronimo, and the treatment they faced from both the United States and Mexico.

At first, I found the shifting between the three strands a bit disorientating. It jumps around quite a lot, and if you’re not concentrating, it’s easy to lose track of where you are. I did find myself having to go back occasionally to pick up the thread again. That said, once I settled into the rhythm, I began to appreciate how the different stories connect and build into something much bigger.

The story that stayed with me most was Camila’s — a mature woman abducted by an Apache group seeking revenge. It’s a thread that carries real emotional weight, and I found myself particularly invested in how it played out. Alongside that, the sections on Geronimo and how he was treated and mythologised add an important historical layer that doesn’t make for comfortable listening, but feels necessary.

This is not a straightforward narrative, but that’s part of its strength. It offers something closer to an alternative western — more fragmented, more reflective, and far less romantic about the realities of the time. It also reinforces just how harsh and unforgiving that world was for the Apache people, who were quite literally fighting for their survival.

If you’re willing to stick with it and give it your full attention, it’s well worth the effort.

An unconventional take on Native American history

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