FICTION

1492: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUAN CABEZON OF CASTILE by Homero Aridjis , translated from the Spanish by Betty Ferber (Summit Books: $19.95; 263 pp.) . In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue; it was also the year in which Spain reduced its three religions to one. Christians conquered Granada, the last stronghold of the Moors, and expelled all the country’s Jews. As Homero Aridjis notes in this novel, the expulsion was motivated not only by the pious fury of the Catholic Church but also by greed: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella used the money from confiscated Jewish estates to finance the war and voyages of discovery.

Aridjis, a prominent Mexican writer, has ransacked 15th-Century sources to tell the story of the expulsion. His picaresque hero, Juan Cabezon, is a descendant of Conversos, or Jews forced to convert to Christianity. Orphaned at an early age, he hangs out in Madrid with beggars, whores and thieves. Later he hides a young Conversa who has been sentenced to death for “relapsing into heresy.” They fall in love. Then she and their baby disappear. Cabezon searches for them all over Spain, encountering the horrors of the Inquisition in every city.

This is anything but a conventional novel. Much of it consists of excerpts from legal decrees and historical chronicles, lists of names, trades and goods, descriptions of clothing, landscapes and architecture. It has very little psychology in the modern sense. The dialogue is literary and stylized even when it’s supposed to be “low” and bawdy. Aridjis, who has done vast research, means for us to enter the 15th Century on its own terms--on foot instead of by jet--but for the average reader it’s hard slogging.