Feast of the Goat by Maria Vargoas Llosa
A Gripping Take on the Rise, Fall and Afterlife of a Dictator
Jun 10, 2009
History buffs should not compare this book with the real events it describes.
Instead they, like everyone else, should sink into these rich narratives as Peruvian, well South American, master novelist Mario Vargas Llosa tells a version of the events leading up to, and beyond, the assassination of Dominican dictator Trujillo in 1961.
Trujillo's Last Day - A Powerful Sinister Touch
Like so many of the magic realist genre this is not an easy book to begin with as each chapter is essentially a different part of the story looking at the motivations and perspective of a key character. It also weaves in a version of Trujillo’s last day - a powerful, sinister touch.
To make it even more complicated, but also more glorious, the key narrative which binds all these events together is that of Urania Cabral, the daughter of a fallen politician who many years later returns to the Dominican Republic.
Only as her convoluted and troubling story emerges does the book as a complex whole take on a life of its own.
Simple Prose Style Builds a Rich, Complex Story
With so many different stories, all of them like the people that they are written about ultimately linked, Llosa wisely goes for a simple prose style. Written as reportage it is as a book no less effective for that.
One of the more chilling pieces of is chapter 11 where the story of the campaign against the Haitians is told conversationally but without any loss of immediacy during a lunch to honour American supporters.
In fact it’s the opposite as devoid of poetry but not colour, description or detail the picture that emerges is starker, more bold. It also allows the nature of dictatorship to be held up to the light.
Trujillo, Dictator, Crook, Thief, Philanderer and Asker of Daring Questions
And that’s not pretty. The mildest part of this is where Trujillo in his morning briefing with one of his security chiefs asks the kind of question only a dictator, or fool, could or would.
“There’s something I always forget to ask you,” he said with the vulgarity he used when speaking to his collaborators. “How did you ever marry such an ugly woman?” Out of context this would be funny but in Trujillo’s Dominica it was the best one could expect from the Benefactor as he was ironically called.
Explains Why Dictators Endure Rather than End
There was worse, much worse and a lot more of it and this allows Llosa to offer an explanation as to why one of the key plotters, General Roman, failed in his duty – one of the best bits of the book – but also how and why dictatorships endure to poison what they leave behind.
“Sunk in a kind of hypnosis, he thought his inaction could be due to the fact that although the body of the Chief might be dead, his soul, spirit, whatever you called it, still enslaved him.”
In that way with that sentence Llosa has produced a book that not only tells a rattling good tale in way which it deserves but offered an insight into a darker, dangerous world.
Feast of the Ghost by Mario Vargas Llosa published by Picador USA ISBN 0-312-98706-4
