A review by funnellegant
Where They Burn Books, They Also Burn People by Marcos Antonio Hernandez

4.0

This book was one of the most illuminating I read this year. The story of Friar Diego de Landa and his missionary work in the Yucatan peninsula is important, horrifying, suppressed history. Hernandez weaves a story that alternates between narrative historical fiction about Spanish colonization in the Yucatan and a more contemporary fiction featuring a disturbed, obsessive young man seeking to grow his church and win the heart of his obsessive love interest. I would recommend this to anyone trying to (re)educate themselves about the history of indigenous Americans and the erasure of their culture.

The only reason I am keeping one star back in my review is that I found the narration style hard to follow at times. The author might switch narrative perspective from one character's voice to another's mid-paragraph, and the magical realism was sometimes a confusing end to a story arc.