A Memory Called Empire

A Memory Called Empire is a science fiction novel by Arkady Martine, published in 2019 and her debut. The 2020 Compton Crook Award went to it, as did the Hugo Award for Best Novel that year; it opens the Teixcalaan series, and A Desolation Called Peace came next. The novel is written as a political thriller in a science fiction setting, with conversation and ceremony doing most of the work.

Mahit Dzmare arrives on Teixcalaan as the new ambassador from Lsel Station, a mining habitat that wants to stay independent of the empire next door. She carries an implant holding the memories of Yskandr Aghavn, her predecessor, which should have been updated before she left and was not, leaving his recollections fifteen years out of date. Her predecessor is dead, officially by accident, and her arrival has already been noticed by several factions.

The more people she meets, the more that death looks like a decision. Teixcalaan's elite read and recite poetry the way other capitals use gossip, and Mahit has spent her life studying a culture that is trying very hard to swallow hers. She has to work out who killed him, keep her station from being annexed and decide how much of the secret she is carrying she can afford to keep, and each of those problems makes the others harder.

Martine writes the novel from Mahit's point of view, so the reader learns the empire's etiquette and its poetry at the same time she does. The series continues in A Desolation Called Peace, and the first book establishes Lsel, Teixcalaan and the political situation between them, with the plot largely made up of conversations, ceremonies and correspondence rather than battles.