The Feast of the Goat

Book: Feast of the Goat
Genre: Novel
Language: Spanish
Author: Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-Present)

    One of the most renowned Latin-American writer after Marcase. Aunt Julia and the script writer, story teller, in praise of step mother, the real life of algendro maeytha are some popular flicks. Nobel price winner of the year 2010.

About the Book:

     The novel is based on true story, or more into the life and assassination of a dictator Rafael Trujillo who referred to in the novel as “El Jefe," “Generalissimo," and “Benefactor," who came to power in 1930 and ruled the Dominican Republic with unimaginable brutality over three decades before being assassinated in May 1961 by a group of disgruntled loyalists.

      I read the Novel just before the protests happened against the dictators in Egypt, Libya and other Middle East countries. When I was reading how the tyrants in those countries ruled, I was really shocked by the unbelievable resemblance with the Liosa’s “Goat” Trujillo Molina. The novel clearly reveals the ways tyranny seeps in and ingrains itself within a people and its culture.

     Eventhough the events Vargas-Liosa depicts are real, there are a lot more details which we cannot identify as fact and fiction (Cabral family, for instance, is completely fictional that’s what I read ). Liosa takes a special style in this novel which also worth mentioning and a different experience for a serious reader. The novel is scattered across the present, past and real-time. Liosa amuses us with his incredible skill of story telling.

The novel can be termed as a thriller, when we read chapters of Trujillo’s assignation. But while after his assassination the tortures done by his son is particularly brutal as well(You may need some kind of stone heart to go through it). The novel treats a lot of psychology especially the inconceivable reasons why some of the good people follow the Goat, and how and why the loyalists turned his assassins. In every aspect Feast of the Goat will give a good reading experience.

Summary:

Urania Cabral returns to Santo Domingo, after several years, and remembers the horrifying circumstances that altered her life forever when she was a teenager and her family's relationship to Rafael Trujillo, the Dominican dictator, and as well as the events surrounding his assassination.