The former Peruvian presidential candidate's author tour should attract crowds, and a striking jacket will seduce browsers.In The Feast of the Goat, 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. The Day of the Goat, mining a rich vein. (Nov.)įorecast: Vargas Llosa is on solid ground with 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 political novelists. Finally, Vargas Llosa crosscuts Urania's story and Trujillo's with that of Trujillo's assassins first, as they wait to ambush him, and then as they are tracked down, captured and tortured to death, with almost medieval ferocity, by Trujillo's son, Ramfis. Like Stalin, Trujillo ruled by turning his rage without warning against his subordinates. We follow the sly, vile despot, with his petty rages, his lust, his dealings with his avaricious family, through his last day, with mingled feelings of repulsion and awe. Vargas Llosa's triumph is Trujillo's story. Urania's character is a little too pat, however. At 49, she impulsively returns on a visit and slowly reveals the root of her alienation. She is 14 at the time of the Trujillo assassination and, as we gradually discover, was betrayed by her father to Trujillo.
The first concerns Urania Cabral, the daughter of one of Trujillo's closest associates, Agustín Cabral. Vargas Llosa divides his narrative between three different story lines.
The "enemy" is old age-at 70, Trujillo, who has always prided himself on his grooming and discipline, is shaken by bouts of incontinence and impotence. "This wasn't an enemy he could defeat like the hundreds, the thousands he had confronted and conquered over the years, buying them, intimidating them, killing them." So thinks Rafael Trujillo, "the Goat," dictator of the Dominican Republic, on the morning of May 30, 1961-a day that will end in his assassination.
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