The Pope Of the Indies

Don Felipe is an Inca prince, exiled to a village in the Andes. He has seen his people crushed under to the Spanish conquerors’ yoke and killed by the sicknesses they carried. As his own time is running out, he writes a letter to the king of Spain, a plea for justice before it is too late. The letter grows to more than a thousand illustrated pages, to contain all of the old man’s knowledge about his vanishing world, including a history of his people. After he completes his chronicle, Felipe and his grandson journey across mountains and through deep jungles to deliver it in Lima, “The City of Kings.&rd

Ib Michael’s novel The Pope of the Indies, translated by Ingrid G. Lansford, tells of a stubborn dreamer convinced to the last that justice is possible in this world. The prize-winning fictionalized biography is based on the Inca Chronicle, an illustrated manuscript in Spanish with a sprinkling of Quechua dating from 1615, now in the Danish Royal Library and considered its greatest treasure.