Mario Vargas Llosa - The Feast of the Goat

Poignant, moving, and immensely readableengaging and insightfulA 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

Llosas Trujillo is a riveting creationa corked volcano of vulgar, self-pitying rage. Trujillo is a Nietzchean vampire, sucking up others wills into his own. The generals 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 worlds premier novelists.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

It is the novels marvelous and complex formal masterythat conquers the reader, in the way that the formal beauty of great musical composition does. I cant 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 Llosas 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. Llosas 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 Llosas rendering of Trujillo is, plainly put, magnificent.

Jonathan Miles, Mens Journal

This is a dark, energetic, and powerful novel. The Feast of the Goat , a realist version of Gabriel Garca Mrquezs 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 generalssimo. 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 Llosas 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 Llosas The Feast of the Goat is the best kind of historical novela tightly focused examination of corruption and violence rooted in the follies of the human heart.

Philip Herter, St. Petersburg Times

The Feast of the Goat is a fascinating version of the last days of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, the goat, the dictator who led the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961. The great Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosalargely succeeds on both fronts; as a thrilling page-turner and a documentation of historical record. Another highlight in a magnificent career.

David Lida, San Antonio Express-News

Compelling and controversial, La Fiesta del Chivo (The Feast of the Goat ) is a must read.

Alberto Huerta, Hispanic Outlook

According to Mario Vargas Llosa, good fiction makes people uneasy. By that standard, his Feast of the Goat is a masterpiece, both to the degree it is sure to make readers squirm and for the multitude of reasons it gives them to do so.

Steve Tomasula, Review of Contemporary Fiction

With his tight and gripping storytelling techniquecombined with the numerous historical detailVargas Llosa ensnares the reader completely within this novel, transforming a few personal stories into a panoramic and powerful reproduction of Latin American history and politics.

Kathleen Guico, Harvard Book Review

Rivaling Shakespeares Julius Caesar as one of the most disturbing fictional accounts of tyranny meeting its unexpected annihilation, Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosas The Feast of the Goat is a fierce, brilliant account of the poorly orchestrated 1961 assassination of the Dominican Republics dictator, Rafael Trujillo, and its far-reaching repercussions.

Jeremy Spencer, The Memphis Flyer

[ Feast of the Goat ] is nothing less than a head-on attack against the most inhumanly cruel and degrading kind of corrupt dictatorship. The plot is fast moving, suspenseful, and gripping.

Donald L. Shaw, Latin American Literature and Arts

To Lourdes and Jos Israel Cuello,
and so many other Dominican friends

The people celebrate

and go all the way

for the Feast of the Goat

the Thirtieth of May.

They Killed the Goat
A Dominican merengue