Tales of Cusco

"Tales of Cusco" is a vivid and touching story of the end of Inca civilisation as told within the context of its female royalty. The richly detailed human stories bring to life the world of the Incas and their Spanish conquerors and shed new light on the darker corners of colonial history. The story begins with the early days of Pizarro's conquest at Cajamarca in the 1530s, when the emperor Atahualpa gifted his young sister wife Quispe Sis Huaylas to Pizarro. The Inca Princesses were married off to the Conquistadores. Their lives are traced through successive generations until the line reaches its tragic and pathetic end with the forty year imprisonment of the Last Inca and his death in Buenos Aires in 1827. Stuart Stirling brilliantly captures the end of a whole civilisation through the lives of its former rulers.