The New World of Martin Cortes

As the once-great Aztec empire lay in ruins, an illegitimate child was born to its conqueror, Hernan Cortes. The product of a union between the famous conquistador and his Mayan slave woman and translator, Malinche, the child was named Martin Cortes—remembered today by Mexicans as the first mestizo, emblematic of Mexico’s origins.In The New World of Martin Cortes, Anna Lanyon takes us on a journey of historical discovery, vividly evoking those extraordinary times when two empires—Spain and Mexico—collided. This is a tale of intrigue and identity, exploring Martin Cortes’s relations with his famous father, his half-brother of the same father and name (Cortes also named his second, legitimate son, Martin), his mother’s indigenous people; and his father’s noble peers. As Lanyon unearths the life and times of Martin Cortes, we learn something about the processes of history and legend as well, and the nature of the human spirit caught between two worlds.