The year is the near future: Condolezza Rice is President of the USA, and the Americans are upset that the Mexican President has criticized the US occupation of Columbia, as well as its refusal to pay OPEC prices for international oil and, in retaliation, there has been a “glitch” in satellite functioning that has plunged Mexico in to communications darkness: no phones, no radio, no emails, no wireless, nothing but the archaic method of writing letters. So the entire novel is a series of letters (70 of them) among the various protagonists of the play. And what an eclectic lot they are: the President himself, various members of Cabinet, the head of the armed forces, the head of the secret police, an ex-President, the principal aid to the President, the cheating wife of a cabinet minister, a would-be king maker in the person of Maria del Rosario Galvan who entices her protégé by letting him watch her from outside as she undresses at night to show her perfect body, which the protégé, Nicola Valdivia, lusts after on his way to becoming President.

The interactions of all these players form the basis of this remarkable novel; a study of personal and political intrigue with constantly shifting sands of alliances and interests, greed, ambition, corruption, the elixir and aphrodisiac of power, murder, skeletons from the past rattling around the present, blackmail, and a scale of political machinations and hypocrisy that would make Machiavelli blush. And throughout, a vehicle for Fuentes to expound and explore concepts of, and comments on, life and morality.

Maria del Rosario describes politics as, “the public expression of private passions. Including, perhaps most of all, romantic passion. But passions are very arbitrary forms of conduct, and politics is a discipline. We act the greatest measure of freedom granted us by a universe that is at once multitudinous, uncertain, random, and necessary, fights for power, competing for a tiny sphere of authority.” Or, as another character puts it, “The art of politics is not the art of the possible. It is the graffiti of the unpredictable. It is the scribble of chance.” Fuentes explores the wonderful irony of people who think they can control events, and in some limited degree they do, but there are always limitations, unforeseen and unforeseeable development because anything that involves other people (who are also scheming hard) means networks of webs that touch, collide, and maybe reinforce, but constantly shift as patterns of interests and connections and allies are continually reassessed, changed and used for advantage. The hubris of people who think they can control the randomness of the universe, even their small, personal universes.

Fuentes despairs of the Mexican polity which he variously describes as, “…a destructive country that protects itself and deceives itself with false psychology and a sensitivity, born of suffering, to art and death.”…..”the ruins of a Mexico cyclically devastated by a combination of excess and shortage: poverty and corruptions equally rooted, evil people who were far too competent and good people who were far too incompetent; affectation and pretension at the top and grim resignation down below; lost opportunities; governments blaming everything on the people and their civic passivity, and the people blaming the government’s ineptitude…”

And yet, and yet, all is not despair. The ultimate political operator and cynic, Maria del Rosario writes that her senses are assaulted by cacophonies of sound, stenches, no taste left in her palate, no pleasure left in touch…but…but she finds, to her shock, that “…my eyes are filled with love. I don’t need a mirror to prove it. I look out from Chapultepec and I feel love, for the city and the Valley of Mexico.” I think this is Fuentes himself: steely-eyed and unsentimental in his awareness and analysis of Mexican society but underneath, a love for the country and for what it might achieve.

This is a fine novel, by a writer at the height of his powers. Strongly recommended. ( )

I really wanted to like this book. I'd read and enjoyed several novels by Fuentes over ten years ago, such as "the Hydra Head", but hadn't read anything by him for a long time. This book has good patches of writing, but never coheres into a convincing whole - not helped by the epistolary form. In the end, disappointing, and maybe one of my three stars is for old times' sake. ( )

I agree with MisterJJones in his review, but would like to add a few points. Firstly, the book is a slow start. The pace quickens significantly towards the second half.

But mostly I was disappointed with the "letter format". The letters (from A to B...) don't read like letters. There is no unique style to each writer and they look just like a chapter in a book, with direct speech, an so on. They also contain too much of "I'm telling you what you already know..." to be credible. The idea of presenting the book as a series of letters is nice, even if the reason for doing so is far-fetched, but unfortunatly it is not carried out as well as one could wish. ( )

Rather an interesting book this. I wouldn't normally have picked it up, but it was in the sale and looked like something different. And different it is - a novel written entirely in letter form - a letter from person A to person B, person B to C, C to A, and so on. The rationale for this is a little contrived, but it serves to enliven an already lively web of political intrigue and sexual schemes.

A battle for the eponymous presidency of Mexico in the the near future, the Eagle's Throne is sometimes a little too clever for its own good, and the characters veer dangerously close to farcical, but for the most part the satire is clever and well directed.

Despite knowing almost nothing of the politics or history of Mexico, I was soon caught up in the tale, and it held me to the dramatic (or melodramatic) ending. ( )