Bookshelf

| browse books |
books
 

| book details |

El Iluminado: A Mystery of Santa Fe

By (author) Ilan Stavans, By (author) Steve Sheinkin

| on special |

normal price: R 639.95

Price: R 607.95


| book description |

In this entertaining, thought-provoking detective graphic novel set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a fictional Ilan Stavans seeks to solve a murder and locate a lost manuscript by a prominent 16th-century Crypto-Jew burned at the stake by the Spanish Inquisition. When young Rolando Perez falls to his death from a cliff outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, the mysteries immediately begin to accumulate. Was he pushed or did he jump? What might Rolando have been so desperate to protect that he would sacrifice himself? And what does a colorful concha pastry have to do with any of this? In the midst of the investigation, Professor Ilan Stavans arrives in Santa Fe to give a lecture about the area’s long-buried Jewish history. He’s looking forward to relaxing afterward with an evening at the opera, but his presentation on “crypto-Jews” attracts unexpected attention, and soon Ilan is drawn into a desperate race to find the long-lost documents that might hold the key to Rolando’s death. His amateur sleuthing leads him to taco joints, desert ranches, soaring cathedrals, and, finally, deep into the region’s past, where he encounters Luis de Carvajal, also called “El Iluminado.” In a sixteenth-century tale of martyrdom that eerily echoes Rolando’s, Carvajal fled Spain for colonial Mexico at the height of the Spanish Inquisition, searching for his religious heritage—a hunt for which he, like Rolando, would pay the ultimate price. In El Iluminado, esteemed literary critic Ilan Stavans and author and illustrator Steve Sheinkin present a secret history of religion in the Americas, showing how thousands of European refugees have left a trail of ghostly footprints—and troves of mysteries—across the American Southwest. This paperback edition includes a new afterword recounting the amazing events that occurred after the original publication, including the real-life discovery of the long-lost memoir of Luis de Carvajal and its restoration to Mexico.

| product details |



Normally shipped | Forthcoming
Publisher | University of New Mexico Press
Published date | 17 Mar 2026
Language |
Format | Paperback / softback
Pages | 216
Dimensions | 254 x 178 x 20mm (L x W x H)
Weight | 265g
ISBN | 978-0-8263-6918-5
Readership Age |
BISAC | comics & graphic novels / graphic novels / crime & mystery
Expected | 12 May 2026

| other options |



Normally shipped | Forthcoming. Coming into print soon, we are accepting back orders for this item
Readership Age |
Normal Price | R 720.95
Price | R 684.95 | on special |



| your trolley |

To view the items in your trolley please sign in.

| sign in |

| specials |

Broken Country: AMAZON'S BOOK OF THE YEAR - THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER

Clare Leslie Hall
Paperback / softback
320 pages
was: R 395.95
now: R 355.95
Usually dispatched in 6-12 days

An epic love story with the pulse of a thriller that asks: what would you risk for a second chance at first love?

Exiles: Times book of the month 'Stanley Kubrick meets MR James'

Mason Coile
Paperback / softback
224 pages
was: R 520.95
now: R 468.95
Forthcoming

A terrifying locked-room mystery set in a remote outpost on Mars.

The Correspondent

Virginia Evans
Hardback
288 pages
was: R 552.95
now: R 525.95
Available from overseas. Usually dispatched in 14 days


Theory & Practice

Michelle de Kretser
Hardback
192 pages
was: R 415.95
now: R 373.95
Available from overseas. Dispatched in aprox 4-8 weeks as local supplier is out of stock