Red Smoking Mirror ('The love child of JG Ballard and Ursula K Le Guin’ Joanna Pocock) - Nick Hunt

‘With Red Smoking Mirror, Nick Hunt has created the love child of JG Ballard and Ursula K Le Guin’ - Joanna Pocock, author of SurrenderShortlisted in the 2024 Edward Stanford Awards for the Viking Award for Fiction with a Sense of Place‘A beautifully written evocation of a world that never was’ - GuardianThe 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. 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…‘Highly original’ - Irish Times