The Feast of the Goat: A Novel - Vargas Llosa, Mario Review & Synopsis

 Synopsis

Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of l961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway that will have bloody consequences of its own. In this 'masterpiece of Latin American and world literature, and one of the finest political novels ever written' (Bookforum), Mario Vargas Llosa recounts the end of a regime and the birth of a terrible democracy, giving voice to the historical Trujillo and the victims, both innocent and complicit, drawn into his deadly orbit.

Review

Mario Vargas Llosa, a former candidate for the presidency of Peru, is better placed than most novelists to write about the machinations of Latin American politics. In The Feast of the Goat he offers a vivid re-creation of the Dominican Republic during the final days of General Rafael Trujillo's insidious and evil regime. Told from several viewpoints, the book has three distinctive, alternating strands. There is Urania Cabral, the daughter of Trujillo's disgraced secretary of state, who has returned to Santo Domingo after more than 30 years. Now a successful New York lawyer, Urania has never forgiven her aging and paralyzed father, Agust�n, for literally sacrificing her to the carnal despot in the hope of regaining his political post. Flipping back to May of 1961, there is a group of assassins, all equally scarred by Trujillo, waiting to gun the Generalissimo down. Finally there is an astonishing portrait of Trujillo--the Goat--and his grotesque coterie. Llosa depicts Trujillo as a villain of Shakespearean proportions. He is a preening, macho dandy who equates his own virility with the nation's health. An admirer of Hitler "not for his ideas but for the way he wore a uniform" (fittingly he equips his secret police force with a fleet of black Volkswagen Beetles), Trujillo even has his own Himler in Colonel Abbes Garcia, a vicious torturer with a predilection for the occult.

 As the novel edges toward Trujillo's inevitable murder, Urania's story gets a bit lost in the action; the remaining narratives however, are rarely short of mesmerizing. Trujillo's death unleashes a new order, but not the one expected by the conspirators. Enslaved by the soul of the dead chief, neither they nor the Trujillo family--who embark on a hideous spree of bloody reprisals--are able to fill the void. Llosa has them all skillfully outmaneuvered by the puppet-president Joaqu�n Belaguer, a former poet who is the very antithesis of the machismo Goat. Savage, touching, and bleakly funny, this compelling book gives an all too human face to one of Latin America's most destructive tyrants. --Travis Elborough, Amazon.co.uk

MARIO VARGAS LLOSA was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010 "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." Peru's foremost writer, he has been awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor, and the Jerusalem Prize. His many works include The Feast of the Goat, The Bad Girl, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, The War of the End of the World, and The Storyteller. He lives in London.

The Feast of the Goat

Urania Cabral, a New York lawyer, returns to the Dominican Republic after a lifelong self-imposed exile. Once she is back in her homeland, the elusive feeling of terror that has overshadowed her whole life suddenly takes shape. Urania's own story alternates with the powerful climax of dictator Rafael Trujillo's reign.In 1961, Trujillo's decadent inner circle (which includes Urania's soon-to-be disgraced father) enjoys the luxuries of privilege while the rest of the nation lives in fear and deprivation. As Trujillo clings to power, a plot to push the Dominican Republic into the future is being formed. But after the murder of its hated dictator, the Goat, is carried out, the Dominican Republic is plunged into the nightmare of a bloody and uncertain aftermath. Now, thirty years later, Urania reveals how her own family was fatally wounded by the forces of history. In The Feast of the Goat Mario Vargas Llosa eloquently explores the effects of power and violence on the lives of both the oppressors and those they victimized.'The Feast of the Goat will stand out as the great emblematic novel of Latin America's twentieth century and removes One Hundred Years of Solitude of that title.' Times Literary Supplement

'The Feast of the Goat will stand out as the great emblematic novel of Latin America's twentieth century and removes One Hundred Years of Solitude of that title.' Times Literary Supplement"

Death in the Andes

Set in an isolated, run down community in the Peruvian Andes, Vargas Llosa's riveting novel tells the story of a series of mysterious disappearances involving the Shining Path guerrillas and a local couple performing cannibalistic sacrifices with strange similarities to the Dionysian rituals of ancient Greece. Part-detective novel and part-political allegory, it offers a panoramic view of Peruvian society; not only of the current political violence and social upheaval, but also of the country's past, and its connection to Indian culture and to pre-Hispanic mysticism. As in his other novels, Vargas Llosa breathes into this work a magical assemblage of narrators, time frames and subplots. We meet Senderista guerrillas, disenfranchised Indians, jaded army officers, eccentric townspeople and cult worshippers, among many unforgettable characters. The result is a work of broad sweep, powerful narrative drive, and keen insight into one of Latin America's most fascinating and complex countries.

As in his other novels, Vargas Llosa breathes into this work a magical assemblage of narrators, time frames and subplots."

The Neighborhood

A thrilling tale of desire and Peruvian corruption swirls around a scandalous exposé that leads to murder From the Nobel Laureate comes a politically charged detective novel weaving through the underbelly of Peruvian privilege. In the 1990s, during the turbulent and deeply corrupt years of Alberto Fujimori’s presidency, two wealthy couples of Lima’s high society become embroiled in a disturbing vortex of erotic adventures and politically driven blackmail. One day Enrique, a high-profile businessman, receives a visit from Rolando Garro, the editor of a notorious magazine that specializes in salacious exposés. Garro presents Enrique with lewd pictures from an old business trip and demands that he invest in the magazine. Enrique refuses, and the next day the pictures are on the front page. Meanwhile, Enrique’s wife is in the midst of a passionate and secret affair with the wife of Enrique’s lawyer and best friend. When Garro shows up murdered, the two couples are thrown into a whirlwind of navigating Peru’s unspoken laws and customs, while the staff of the magazine embark on their greatest exposé yet. Ironic and sensual, provocative and redemptive, the novel swirls into the kind of restless realism that has become Mario Vargas Llosa’s signature style. A twisting, unpredictable tale, The Neighborhood is at once a scathing indictment of Fujimori’s regime and a crime thriller that evokes the vulgarity of freedom in a corrupt system.

Ironic and sensual, provocative and redemptive, the novel swirls into the kind of restless realism that has become Mario Vargas Llosa’s signature style."

The Dream of the Celt

A subtle and enlightening novel about a neglected human rights pioneer by the Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa In 1916, the Irish nationalist Roger Casement was hanged by the British government for treason. Casement had dedicated his extraordinary life to improving the plight of oppressed peoples around the world—especially the native populations in the Belgian Congo and the Amazon—but when he dared to draw a parallel between the injustices he witnessed in African and American colonies and those committed by the British in Northern Ireland, he became involved in a cause that led to his imprisonment and execution. Ultimately, the scandals surrounding Casement's trial and eventual hanging tainted his image to such a degree that his pioneering human rights work wasn't fully reexamined until the 1960s. In The Dream of the Celt, Mario Vargas Llosa, who has long been regarded as one of Latin America's most vibrant, provocative, and necessary literary voices—a fact confirmed when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010—brings this complex character to life as no other writer can. A masterful work, sharply translated by Edith Grossman, The Dream of the Celt tackles a controversial man whose story has long been neglected, and, in so doing, pushes at the boundaries of the historical novel.

A masterful work, sharply translated by Edith Grossman, The Dream of the Celt tackles a controversial man whose story has long been neglected, and, in so doing, pushes at the boundaries of the historical novel."

A Fish in the Water

Mario Vargas Llosa's A Fish in the Water is a twofold book: a memoir by one of Latin America's most celebrated writers, beginning with his birth in 1936 in Arequipa, Peru; and the story of his organization of the reform movement which culminated in his bid for the Peruvian presidency in 1990.Llosa evokes the experiences which gave rise to his fiction, and describes the social, literary, and political influences that led him to enter the political arena as a crusader for a free-market economy.A deeply absorbing look at how fact becomes fiction and at the formation of a courageous writer with strong political commitments, A Fish in the Water reveals Mario Vargas Llosa as a world figure whose real story is just beginning.

Mario Vargas Llosa's A Fish in the Water is a twofold book: a memoir by one of Latin America's most celebrated writers, beginning with his birth in 1936 in Arequipa, Peru; and the story of his organization of the reform movement which ..."

The Way to Paradise

In 1844, Flora Tristan embarked on a tour of France to campaign for workers' and women's rights. In 1891, her grandson set sail for Tahiti, determined to escape civilisation and seek out inspiration to paint his primitive masterpieces. Flora died before her grandson was born, but their travels and obsessions unravel side by side in this absorbing novel.Flora, the illegitimate child of a wealthy Peruvian father and French mother, grows up in poverty, and after fleeing a brutal husband, journeys to Peru to demand her inheritance. On her return, she makes her name as a popular writer and a champion of the dispossessed, setting herself the arduous task of touring the French countryside to recruit members for her Workers' Union.Paul, struggling, profligate painter and stubborn visionary, abandons his wife and five children for life in the South Seas, where his dreams of paradise are poisoned by poverty, syphilis and the stifling forces of French colonialism, though he has his pick of teenage Tahitian lovers and paints some of his greatest works.A rare study of passion, ambition and the determined pursuit of greatness in the face of illness, death and conservative forces, The Way to Paradise shows a contemporary master at the peak of his powers.

Flora died before her grandson was born, but their travels and obsessions unravel side by side in this absorbing novel.Flora, the illegitimate child of a wealthy Peruvian father and French mother, grows up in poverty, and after fleeing a ..."

The Storyteller

A visitor from Peru, happening upon an exhibition of photographs from the Amazon jungle in an obscure Florentine picture gallery, finds his attention drawn to a picture of a tribal storyteller seated among a circle of Michiguenga Indians. There is something odd about the storyteller. He is too light-skinned to be an Indian. As the visitor stares at the photograph, it dawns on him that he knows this man. The storyteller is his long-lost friend, Saul Zuratas, his classmate from university who was thought to have disappeared in Israel.The Storyteller is a brilliant and compelling study of the world of the primitive and its place in our own modern lives.

The storyteller is his long-lost friend, Saul Zuratas, his classmate from university who was thought to have disappeared in Israel.The Storyteller is a brilliant and compelling study of the world of the primitive and its place in our own ..."

La fiesta del chivo / The Feast of the Goat

Vargas Llosa, Premio Nobel de Literatura y Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras, relata el fin de una era dando voz al impecable e implacable general Trujillo, apodado el Chivo, y al sosegado y hábil doctor Balaguer (sempiterno presidente de la República Dominicana). Uno de los mejores libros en español de los últimos 25 años según Babelia. ¿Por qué regresa Urania Cabral a la isla que juró no volver a pisar? ¿Por qué sigue vacía y llena de miedo desde los catorce años? ¿Por qué no ha tenido un solo amor? En La Fiesta del Chivo (2000) asistimos a un doble retorno. Mientras Urania visita a su padre en Santo Domingo, volvemos a 1961, cuando la capital dominicana aún se llamaba Ciudad Trujillo. Allí un hombre que no suda tiraniza a tres millones de personas sin saber que se gesta una maquiavélica transición a la democracia. Con un ritmo y una precisión difícilmente superables, este peruano universal muestra que la política puede consistir en abrirse camino entre cadáveres, y que un ser inocente puede convertirse en un regalo truculento. Mejor novela española del siglo XXI según los expertos consultados por el diario ABC. Reseñas: «Mario Vargas Llosa ha vuelto a la novela histórica con el arte acumulado tras su ya extenso periplo literario. El resultado es un libro espléndido, de lo mejor que ha dado su innegable talento.» Joaquín Marco, El Cultural de El Mundo «Una estructura perfectamente engarzada, donde el desarrollo de las tres líneas argumentales se refuerza sostenidamente a un ritmo apasionante de thriller político e intriga dramática.» Fietta Jarque, Babelia «Esta novela atrapará a todo aquel que caiga en sus fauces. El festín narrativo organizado por el autor invita a continuar insomne hasta el último lamento de esperanza final... podemos disfrutar, una vez más, de un talento torrencial, el que se vierte en las voces y acontecimientos de una obra llena de incertidumbres morales.» Andrés Magro, Diario 16 «El doctor Vargas Llosa ha escrito mucho más que la historia de un magnicidio... Esta es la vuelta triunfal a su mejor literatura.» Javier Aparicio, El Periódico de Catalunya «Pletórico de imaginación, técnica narrativa y altura de pensamiento, vuelve el mejor Mario Vargas Llosa con La Fiesta del Chivo , una feroz crítica de la tiranía impuesta por Trujillo a la República Dominicana y una excepcional novela sobre la corrupción que envuelve cualquier forma absolutista de ejercicio de poder.» Francisco García Pérez, La Nueva España ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of l961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway that will have bloody consequences of its own. In this 'masterpiece of Latin American and world literature, and one of the finest political novels ever written' (Bookforum), Mario Vargas Llosa recounts the end of a regime and the birth of a terrible democracy, giving voice to the historical Trujillo and the victims, both innocent and complicit, drawn into his deadly orbit.

In this 'masterpiece of Latin American and world literature, and one of the finest political novels ever written' (Bookforum), Mario Vargas Llosa recounts the end of a regime and the birth of a terrible democracy, giving voice to the ..."

A Writer's Reality

In this book, Vargas Llosa invites readers to enter into his confidence as he unravels six of his own novels and two other works of fundamental importance to him. Vargas Llosa's native Peru, the setting and character of much of his fiction, is at the centre of his piece on "The Chronicles of the Birth of Peru" - the powerful account of the discovery and conquest of Peru by the Spaniards - which Vargas Llosa describes as "novels disguised as history". In other chapters, Vargas Llosa tells how his method of writing has evolved, discusses his attraction to Sartre's work and his days at military school, describes what it was like at nine to see the ocean for the first time, and explains the process of changing the dead language of "soap operas" (as in his own "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter") into the living language of serious art. He also relates why "The War of the End of the World" is his personal favourite among his novels. Throughout A Writer's Reality, Vargas Llosa focusses on what he sees as a central metaphor for the writer's task - to transform lies into truth.

In this book, Vargas Llosa invites readers to enter into his confidence as he unravels six of his own novels and two other works of fundamental importance to him."

The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto

Set in Lima, the novel tells of a love story whose participants may be the fictional characters of Don Rigoberto. With his usual sly assurance, Vargas Llosa keeps the reader guessing which episodes are real and which issue from the Don's imagination; the resulting novel, an aggregate of reality and fantasy, is sexy, funny, disquieting, and unfailingly compelling.

Set in Lima, the novel tells of a love story whose participants may be the fictional characters of Don Rigoberto."

The Bad Girl

Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as 'Lily' in Lima in 1950, where she claims to be from Chile but vanishes the moment her claim is exposed as fiction. He loves her next in Paris as 'Comrade Arlette', an activist en route to Cuba, an icy, remote lover who denies knowing anything about the Lily of years gone by. Whoever the bad girl turns up as and however poorly she treats him, Ricardo is doomed to worship her. Gifted liar and irresistible, maddening muse - does Ricardo ever know who she really is?

Whoever the bad girl turns up as and however poorly she treats him, Ricardo is doomed to worship her. Gifted liar and irresistible, maddening muse - does Ricardo ever know who she really is?"

The Call of the Tribe

The intellectual autobiography of Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. From its origins, the liberal doctrine has represented the most advanced forms of democratic culture, and it is what has most defended us from the inextinguishable "call of the tribe." This book hopes to make a modest contribution to that indispensable task. In The Call of the Tribe, Mario Vargas Llosa surveys the readings that have shaped the way he thinks and has viewed the world over the past fifty years. The Nobel laureate, “tireless in his quest to probe the nature of the human animal” (Marie Arana, The Washington Post), maps out the liberal thinkers who helped him develop a new body of ideas after the great ideological traumas of his disenchantment with the Cuban Revolution and alienation from the ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre, the author who most inspired Vargas Llosa in his youth. Writers like Adam Smith, José Ortega y Gasset, Friedrich A. Hayek, Karl Popper, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin, and Jean-François Revel helped the author enormously during those uneasy years. They showed him another school of thought that placed the individual before the tribe, nation, class, or party, and defended freedom of expression as a fundamental value for the exercise of democracy. The Call of the Tribe documents Vargas Llosa’s engagement with their work and charts the evolution of his personal intellectual and philosophical ideology.

From its origins, the liberal doctrine has represented the most advanced forms of democratic culture, and it is what has most defended us from the inextinguishable “call of the tribe.” This book hopes to make a modest contribution to ..."

In Praise of the Stepmother

With meticulous observation and the seductive skill of a great storyteller, Vargas Llosa lures the reader into the shadow of perversion that, little by little, darkens the extraordinary happiness and harmony of his characters. The mysterious nature of happiness and above all, the corrupting power of innocence are the themes that underlie these pages, and the author has perfectly met the demands of the erotic novel, never dimming for an instant the fine poetic polish of his writing.

The mysterious nature of happiness and above all, the corrupting power of innocence are the themes that underlie these pages, and the author has perfectly met the demands of the erotic novel, never dimming for an instant the fine poetic ..."

Harsh Times

THE NEW NOVEL FROM THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE"A wildly enjoyable book; the 85-year-old Vargas Llosa is as sharp and mordantly funny as ever." Financial Times"A compelling and propulsive literary thriller." Hari Kunzru, New York Times Book Review"A splendidly rich and absorbing novel." The Scotsman"Compelling . . . full of intrigue, backstabbing and shifting power dynamics." Irish TimesGuatemala, 1954. A CIA-supported military coup topples the government. Behind this violent act is a lie passed off as truth, which forever changed the development of Latin America: that those in power encouraged the spread of Soviet communism in the Americas.Mario Vargas Llosa has written a drama on a world stage, in which some persecutors end up as victims of the very plot they helped construct. Ironic and sensual, provocative and redemptive, Harsh Times is a story of international conspiracies and conflicting interests in the time of the Cold War, the echoes of which are still felt today.

THE NEW NOVEL FROM THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE"A wildly enjoyable book; the 85-year-old Vargas Llosa is as sharp and mordantly funny as ever."

The Discreet Hero

The latest masterpiece—perceptive, funny, insightful, affecting—from the Nobel Prize–winning author Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa's newest novel, The Discreet Hero, follows two fascinating characters whose lives are destined to intersect: neat, endearing Felícito Yanaqué, a small businessman in Piura, Peru, who finds himself the victim of blackmail; and Ismael Carrera, a successful owner of an insurance company in Lima, who cooks up a plan to avenge himself against the two lazy sons who want him dead. Felícito and Ismael are, each in his own way, quiet, discreet rebels: honorable men trying to seize control of their destinies in a social and political climate where all can seem set in stone, predetermined. They are hardly vigilantes, but each is determined to live according to his own personal ideals and desires—which means forcibly rising above the pettiness of their surroundings. The Discreet Hero is also a chance to revisit some of our favorite players from previous Vargas Llosa novels: Sergeant Lituma, Don Rigoberto, Doña Lucrecia, and Fonchito are all here in a prosperous Peru. Vargas Llosa sketches Piura and Lima vividly—and the cities become not merely physical spaces but realms of the imagination populated by his vivid characters. A novel whose humor and pathos shine through in Edith Grossman's masterly translation, The Discreet Hero is another remarkable achievement from the finest Latin American novelist at work today.

The latest masterpiece—perceptive, funny, insightful, affecting—from the Nobel Prize–winning author Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa's newest novel, The Discreet Hero, follows two fascinating characters whose lives are destined to ..."

The Time of the Hero

The action of The Time of the Hero, Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa's first novel, takes place at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, Peru. There, four angry cadets who have formed an inner circle in an attempt to ward off the boredom and stifling confinement of the military academy set off a chain of events that starts with a theft and leads to murder and suicide. The Time of the Hero presents, with great accuracy and power, the cadets' nightmare life: brutal initiation rights, poker in the latrines, drinking contests; and, above all else, the strange military code which, whether broken or followed, can only destroy. When The Time of the Hero was first published in Peru in 1962, it was considered so scandalous that a thousand copies were burned in an official ceremony at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy. That same year, the book received the Biblioteca Breve Prize, an award given to the best work of fiction in the Spanish language. "...[A]s with other fine writers, Vargas functions on more than a single level of meaning." - The New York Times

That same year, the book received the Biblioteca Breve Prize, an award given to the best work of fiction in the Spanish language. "...[A]s with other fine writers, Vargas functions on more than a single level of meaning."

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

'A comic novel on the grand scale written with tremendous confidence and verve. Mario, 18-year-old law student and radio news-editor, falls scandalously for his Aunt Julia, the 32-year-old divorced wife of a cousin, and the progressively lunatic story of this affair is interwoven with episodes from a series of radio soap-operas written by his friend Pedro Comacho. Vargas Llosa's huge energy and inventiveness is extravagant and fabulously funny.' New Statesman

Mario, 18-year-old law student and radio news-editor, falls scandalously for his Aunt Julia, the 32-year-old divorced wife of a cousin, and the progressively lunatic story of this affair is interwoven with episodes from a series of radio ..."

The War of the End of the World

Deep within the remote backlands of nineteenth-century Brazil lies Canudos, home to all the damned of the earth: prostitutes, bandits, beggars, and every kind of outcast. It is a place where history and civilization have been wiped away. There is no money, no taxation, no marriage, no census. Canudos is a cauldron for the revolutionary spirit in its purest form, a state with all the potential for a true, libertarian paradise--and one the Brazilian government is determined to crush at any cost. In perhaps his most ambitious and tragic novel, Mario Vargas Llosa tells his own version of the real story of Canudos, inhabiting characters on both sides of the massive, cataclysmic battle between the society and government troops. The resulting novel is a fable of Latin American revolutionary history, an unforgettable story of passion, violence, and the devastation that follows from fanaticism.

The resulting novel is a fable of Latin American revolutionary history, an unforgettable story of passion, violence, and the devastation that follows from fanaticism."

Making Waves: Essays 1962-93

Mario Vargas Llosa has been making waves in cultural and political spheres for over thirty years. Making Waves presents for the first time in English a collection of his essays, a journey through time, through books, and through different geographical locations, plotting the intellectual biography of one of the world's finest writers. We follow Vargas Llosa from Peru to France, where he writes on Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Camus, visits the dog cemetery which contains the tomb of Rin Tin Tin, and describes the life of the aspirant writer in the Paris of the 1960s. In Britain, he examines the writings of Doris Lessing and Salman Rushdie, the house in Dean Street where Karl Marx lived, and - in a hilarious and celebrated memoir - considers the transformation of his son, Gonzalo, into a rastafarian.

Mario Vargas Llosa has been making waves in cultural and political spheres for over thirty years."

Conversation in the Cathedral

A frightening and impressive portrait of evil by one of Latin America's leading contemporary novelists.'A monumentally engrossing novel.' Los Angeles Times

A frightening and impressive portrait of evil by one of Latin America's leading contemporary novelists.'A monumentally engrossing novel.' Los Angeles Times"

Who Killed Palomino Molero?

In Who Killed Palomino Molero? Mario Vargas LLosa has turned to detective fiction. The setting is Peru in the 1950s. Near an air force base in the northern deserts, a young airman is found brutally tortured and murdered. Two local policemen, Lieutenant Silva and Officer Lituma, set out to investigate. But they are not glamorous detectives with modern resources at their disposal; they don't even have a squad car and have to hitch rides on chiken trucks and cajole a local cabdriver to take them out to the scene of the crime.Not that anyone seems eager for Silva and Lituma to capture Palomino Molero's killer. But the two policemen persevere, and the slow and haphazard pace of the investigation only serves to intensify the high-pitched narrative tension, as the novel comes to haltingly rest on the very question with which it began. Who killed Palomino Molero? is an entertaining and brilliantly plotted mystery. It is also serious fiction. Deftly, unobtrusively, the book takes up some of the great themes of all of Vargas Llosa's novels: guilt and innocence, the impossibility of justice in a society grounded in inequality and the eternally elusive nature of the truth.

Deftly, unobtrusively, the book takes up some of the great themes of all of Vargas Llosa's novels: guilt and innocence, the impossibility of justice in a society grounded in inequality and the eternally elusive nature of the truth."

The Cubs and Other Stories

The Cubs and Other Stories is Mario Vargas Llosa's only volume of short fiction available in English. Vargas Llosa's domain is the Peru of male youth and machismo, where life's dramas play themselves out on the soccer field, the dance floor, and on street corners. The title story, "The Cubs," tells the story of the carefree boyhood of P.P. Cuellar and his friends, and of P.P.'s bizarre accident and tragic coming of age. Innovative in style and technique, it is a work of both physical and psychic loss. In a candid and perceptive forward to this collection of early writing, Vargas llosa provides background to the volume and a unique glimpse into the mind of the Nobel Prize-winning artist.

In a candid and perceptive forward to this collection of early writing, Vargas llosa provides background to the volume and a unique glimpse into the mind of the Nobel Prize-winning artist."

In Praise of Reading and Fiction

On December 7, 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His Nobel lLecture is a resounding tribute to fiction's power to inspire readers to greater ambition, to dissent, and to political action. "We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist," Vargas Llosa writes. "Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute—the foundation of the human condition—and should be better." Vargas Llosa's lecture is a powerful argument for the necessity of literature in our lives today. For, as he eloquently writes, "literature not only submerges us in the dream of beauty and happiness but alerts us to every kind of oppression."

"We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist," Vargas Llosa writes."

The Temptation of the Impossible

One of the world's great Latin American novelists helps readers appreciate the incredible ambition, power, and beauty of Victor Hugo's masterpiece in an incisive analysis of one of the most popular novels of the nineteenth century.

Raising practical and theoretical points about the art of the novel, Vargas Llosa never loses sight of Hugo's specific achievement. I recommend this book without hesitation."--Victor Brombert, author of Trains of Thought"

Fonchito & The Moon

Don't miss your first Mario Vargas Llosa: Fonchito and the Moon. Fonchito falls in love for the very first time and discovers that there is nothing one cannot do for a loved one, even if what they wish for is the moon! Fonchito is a little boy with his heart set on winning the affection of his classmate Nereida. She is beautiful, and all he hopes for is her permission to kiss her on the cheek. But she is shy and agrees under only one condition: that Fonchito bring the moon to her. Bring her the moon? What is Fonchito to do? And in that moment his love inspires him to find a way to do the impossible. This first children’s book by Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the world’s greatest writers, is an enchanting story about the magic in discovering how high you can reach for those you love, even if they ask for the moon.

This first children’s book by Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the world’s greatest writers, is an enchanting story about the magic in discovering how high you can reach for those you love, even if they ask for the moon."

Captain Pantoja and the Special Service

In this delightful farce, the prim and proper Captain Pantoja is sent to Peru's Amazon frontier on a secret Army mission - he must find females for the amorous recruits. Yet complications arise as word of his achievements starts to spread, and he finds himself battling against his wife, religious zealots and the Army that gave him the mission in the first place. Through a wonderfully comic montage of letters, military documents, radio broadcasts, dream sequences and dialogue, Mario Vargas Llosa's Captain Pantoja and the Special Service combines political satire with humour, morality with uproarious sexuality.

This delightful farce opens as the prim and proper Captain Pantoja learns he is to be sent to Peru's Amazon frontier on a secret mission for the army-to provide females for the amorous recruits."

Mario Vargas Llosa and the Persistence of Memory

Editado en idioma inglés, este tributo a Mario Vargas Llosa y sus obras reúne los ensayos preparados en su honor, en la Universidad de Hofstra, noviembre del 2003. También se incluye dos entrevistas y una selecta bibliografía.

This essay is a meditation on those lines by Shakespeare in connec- tion with Mario Vargas Llosa's most recent novel , The Feast of the Goat which I will analyze in the context of Vargas Llosa's long trajectory as a writer of political ..."

The Perpetual Orgy

The Perpetual Orgy is Mario Vargas Llosa's brilliant analysis of Gustav Flaubert's masterpiece Madame Bovary. In this remarkable book, "we not only enjoy a dazzling explication, but experience a master discoursing at the top of his form on the craft of the novel" (Robert Taylor, The Boston Globe). It is a tribute to The Perpetual Orgy that it sends the reader back to Flaubert's work with renewed interest.

In this remarkable book, "we not only enjoy a dazzling explication, but experience a master discoursing at the top of his form on the craft of the novel" (Robert Taylor, The Boston Globe)."

Notes on the Death of Culture

'The most approachable and exhilarating Latin American writer of our times.' Robert McCrum, Observer In the past, culture was a kind of vital consciousness that constantly rejuvenated and revivified everyday reality. Now it is largely a mechanism of distraction and entertainment. From one of the world's great literary intelligences, Notes on the Death of Culture is an examination and indictment of this transformation - an impassioned and essential critique of our time.

The searing essay collection by the Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian novelist and social critic in paperback for the first time."

Three Plays

For much of her career, Elfriede Jelinek has been maligned in the press for both her unrelenting critique of Austrian complicity in the Holocaust and her provocative deconstructions of pornography. Despite this, her central role in shaping contemporary literature was finally recognized in 2004 with the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Although she is an internationally recognized playwright, Jelinek's plays are difficult to find in English, which makes this new volume, which includes "Rechnitz: The Exterminating Angel," "The Merchant's Contracts" and "Charges (The Supplicants)" all the more valuable. In "Rechnitz," a chorus of messengers reports on the circumstances of the massacre of 180 Jews, an actual historical event that took place near the Austrian/Hungarian border town of Rechnitz. In "The Merchant's Contracts," Jelinek brings us a comedy of economics, where the babble and media spin of spectators leave small investors alienated and bearing the brunt of the economic crisis. In "Charges (The Supplicants)," Jelinek offers a powerful analysis of the plight of refugees, from ancient times to the present. She responds to the immeasurable suffering among those fleeing death, destruction, and political suppression in their home countries and, drawing on sources as widely separated in time and intent as up-to-the-minute blog postings and Aeschylus's "The Supplicants," Jelinek asks what refugees want, how we as a society view them, and what political, moral, and personal obligations they impose on us.

Although she is an internationally recognized playwright, Jelinek's plays are difficult to find in English, which makes this new volume, which includes "Rechnitz: The Exterminating Angel," "The Merchant's Contracts" and "Charges (The ..."

Letters to a Young Novelist

In the tradition of Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet," Mario Vargas Llosa condenses a lifetime of writing, reading, and thought into an essential manual for aspiring writers, revealing in the process his deepest beliefs about the world of letters. A literary apprenticeship in eleven letters, by the internationally acclaimed master of the novel In the tradition of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Mario Vargas Llosa condenses a lifetime of writing, reading, and thought into an essential manual for aspiring writers, revealing in the process his deepest beliefs about our common literary endeavor. A writer, in his view, is a being seized by an insatiable appetite for creation, a rebel, and a dreamer. But dreams, when set down on paper, require disciplined development, and so Vargas Llosa undertakes to supply the tools of transformation. Drawing on the stories and novels of writers from around the globe-Borges, Bierce, Celine, Cortazar, Faulkner, Kafka, Robbe-Grillet-he lays bare the inner workings of fiction, examining time, space, style, and structure, all the while urging young novelists not to lose touch with the elemental urge to create. Conversational, eloquent, and effortlessly erudite, this little book is destined to be read and reread by young writers, old writers, would-be writers, and all those with a stake in the world of letters.

Conversational, eloquent, and effortlessly erudite, this little book is destined to be read and reread by young writers, old writers, would-be writers, and all those with a stake in the world of letters."