Laurent Binet's alternate history novel imagining that the Aztec and Inca empires, having survived initial European contact, ultimately invade and conquer a weakened Europe.
The counterfactual Columbian Exchange: Binet poses the question — what structural factors made European conquest possible, and if those had been different, could the Americas have conquered Europe? The novel draws on real historical scholarship to make the counterfactual plausible: Viking contact in 1000 AD giving America horses and metal; Aztec and Inca immunological adjustment; a weakened Europe torn by Reformation. A philosophical meditation on contingency, power, and the accidents that determine civilizational outcomes.
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