The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [0]
“Poignant, moving, and immensely readable…engaging and insightful…A new book by Mario Vargas Llosa always provokes attention, for there are few novelists alive as dedicated as he is to the possibilities of fiction, in all its moods, modes, and manners.”
—Alastair Reid, The New York Review of Books
“Llosa’s Trujillo is a riveting creation—a corked volcano of vulgar, self-pitying rage…. Trujillo is a Nietzchean vampire, sucking up others’ wills into his own…. The general’s bloody end is never in doubt. The suspense comes from wondering who will fill his boots.”
—Walter Kirn, The New York Times Book Review
“Gathering power as it rolls along, this massive, swift-moving fictional take on a grim period in Dominican history shows that Vargas Llosa is still one of the world’s premier novelists.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“It is the novel’s marvelous and complex formal mastery…that conquers the reader, in the way that the formal beauty of great musical composition does…. I can’t think of a novel that better dramatizes the way political evil can reach any of us in that innermost place. The Feast of the Goat is a masterpiece of Latin American and world literature, and one of the finest political novels ever written.”
—Francisco Goldman, Bookforum
“Taking on the role more of narrating angel rather than avenging god, [the Peruvian novelist] has brilliantly re-created one of the darkest periods in the recent history of the Americas.”
—Alan Cheuse, San Francisco Chronicle
“Vargas Llosa’s scenes of official murder and sanctioned torture are fulsome enough to have been written by the other Mario, the late best-selling author Mario Puzo. Like the father of The Godfather, the Peru-born Vargas Llosa has a talent for the graphic.”
—R. Sheppard, Time
“In The Feast of the Goat, Vargas Llosa shows that a sweeping historical epic can still be great literature…. Vargas Llosa takes the story of a long-murdered dictator and creates a meditation on memory, terror, and murderous complicity.”
—Dylan Foley, The Denver Post
“The Feast of the Goat succeeds on many levels. Llosa’s writing is, as always, rich and earthy, complex and elegant. The story is a classic.”
—Bruce Tierney, Bookpage
“Vargas Llosa conveys the full humanity of a Shakespeare-worthy villain and conjures, not without comedy, the terrors of his reign. The book is a thriller, gaining speed and depth as it follows the plans of anti-Trujillista assassins; a slightly hazy historical exploration; and a gross-out comedy, lavishly describing a scared old man who can control a country but not his bladder.”
—Troy Patterson, Entertainment Weekly
“Vargas Llosa’s rendering of Trujillo is, plainly put, magnificent.”
—Jonathan Miles, Men’s Journal
“This is a dark, energetic, and powerful novel…. The Feast of the Goat, a realist version of Gabriel García Márquez’s The Autumn of the Patriarch, offers no transcendence. Plotted for years, the assassination of Trujillo brings scant relief. This is a frightening, troubling book.”
—Joan Mellen, The Baltimore Sun
“What is extraordinary about the novel is how carefully Vargas Llosa modulates his tone, sometimes brutal, sometimes witty, sometimes Olympian in its understanding, of how things go. In rendering so viscerally the grotesqueness of this era, Vargas Llosa reminds us that the imagination need not embellish reality, only grasp it fully, as he does magnificently in Feast.”
—Howard Kissel, Daily News (New York)
“A gripping historical novel centering on the last days of the aging generalíssimo. The book is a remarkable and persuasive achievement.”
—Fritz Lanham, Houston Chronicle
“While it is true that every unhappy country is unhappy in its own way, you do not have to be Dominican, or Peruvian, to be engrossed by Vargas Llosa’s deft account of trouble in the tropics. The story of a fastidious beast whose appetite devoured everything, including himself, The Feast of the Goat leaves an acrid aftertaste.”
—Steven Kellman, Chicago Tribune
“Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the