Mario Vargas Llosa Boeken

Mario Vargas Llosa (Arequipa, Peru, 1936) werd wereldberoemd met zijn roman De stad en de honden (1962). Tot zijn bekendste boeken behoren verder Het groene huis (1965) en het omvangrijke epos De oorlog van het einde van de wereld (1983). In De geschiedenis van Alejandro Mayta beschrijft Vargas Llosa op meeslepende wijze het lot van een volk, van een generatie en van een politiek ideaal. Het is een verhaal van alleen maar verliezers, die hij afstandellijk en met iets van wanhoop beschrijft. Want het verhaal van het boek is nog lang niet afgelopen: het volk en het land zitten nog steeds midden in de sombere werkelijkheid waarmee de roman wordt besloten. De hoofdpersoon is de trotzkistische revolutionair Mayta, die in 1958 een mislukte revolutie ontketende, en daarna nieuwe pogingen bleef beramen. Het land is Peru, dat voor gigantische toekomstproblemen staat; het drama betreft de ontwikkeling en het verval van linkse idealen en de chronische begeerte naar macht. Het boek is geconstrueerd als een onderzoek: via getuigenissen van mensen die Mayta hebben gekend, probeert Vargas Llosa diens leven te reconstrueren. De geschiedenis van Alejandro Mayta is een speurtocht naar wie hij eigenlijk was en wat hem bezielde.

De Britse diplomaat Roger Casement wordt uitgezonden naar Congo om daar een bijdrage te leveren aan de civilisering van de inheemse volkeren. Bij aankomst blijkt hij te zijn terechtgekomen in een gruwelijke wereld van uitbuiting en moordpartijen. Casement besluit hierover te rapporteren en wordt een van de eerste voorvechters voor de mensenrechten - niet alleen in Congo maar ook in het Amazonegebied en in zijn thuisland Ierland, waar hij de onderdrukking van zijn eigen landgenoten moet erkennen. Maar terwijl zijn vrijheidsstrijd hem een zeer gerespecteerde positie oplevert moet hij steeds meer zijn best doen om zijn eigen donkere geheimen verborgen te houden. In deze op waarheid geinspireerde roman begint zijn omgeving steeds meer aan de integriteit van de held Casement te twijfelen. De droom van de Ier is een epische roman over een dappere man die genoeg lef heeft om de uitbuiting van anderen bespreekbaar te maken, maar zijn eigen keuzes niet kan verantwoorden.

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 Vargas Llosa eloquently explores the effects of power and violence on the lives of both the oppressors and those they victimized.

The conversation flows between two individuals, Santiago and Ambrosia, who talk of their tormented lives and of the degradation and frustration that has taken over their town. In this groundbreaking novel, Mario Vargas Llosa explores the mental and moral mechanisms that govern power and the people behind it.

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 1961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million people. 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 the way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping away. 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.

The War of the End of the World is one of the great modern historical novels. Inspired by a real episode in Brazilian history, Mario Vargas Llosa tells the unforgettable story of an apocalyptic movement, led by a mysterious prophet, in which prostitutes, beggars and bandits establish Canudos, a new republic, a libertarian paradise.~publisher's web site

In the author's native Peru, this powerful social satire so outraged the authorities that a thousand copies were publicly burned. The novel is set in Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, where a group of cadets attempt to break out of the vicious round of sadistic ragging, military discipline, confinement and boredom.

Mario Vargas Llosa's classic early novel takes place in a Peruvian town, situated between desert and jungle, which is torn by boredom and lust. Don Anselmo, a stranger in a black coat, builds a brothel on the outskirts of the town while he charms its innocent people, setting in motion a chain reaction with extraordinary consequences. This brothel, called the Green House, brings together the innocent and the corrupt: Bonificia, a young Indian girl saved by the nuns only to become a prostitute; Father Garcia, struggling for the church; and four best friends drawn to both excitement and escape. The conflicting forces that haunt the Green House evoke a world balanced between savagery and civilization -- and one that is cursed by not being able to discern between the two.

Spanning 30 years of writing, these essays traces the development of Mario Vargas Llosa's thinking on politics and culture, and show the breadth of his interests and passions. A "Publishers Weekly" Best Book of 1997.

As The Dream of the Celt opens, it is the summer of 1916 and Roger Casement awaits the hangman in London's Pentonville Prison. Dublin lies in ruins after the disastrous Easter Rising led by his comrades of the Irish Volunteers. He has been caught after landing from a German submarine. For the past year he has attempted to raise an Irish brigade from prisoners of war to fight alongside the Germans against the British Empire that awarded him a knighthood only a few years before. And now his petition for clemency is threatened by the leaking of his private diary and his secret life as a gay man.... Vargas-Llosa, with his incomparable gift for powerful historical narrative, takes the reader on a journey back through a remarkable life dedicated to the exposure of barbaric treatment of indigenous peoples by European predators in the Congo and Amazonia. Casement was feted as one of the greatest humanitarians of the age. Now he is about to die ignominiously as a traitor.