Mario Vargas Llosa

 

28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025

Universitaria supporter

Arequipan

Writer

Husband

San Marcos Alumni

The Dream of the Celt, Death in the Andes

The Dream of the Celt

 

Llosa plays it straight

This is a retelling of the story of Rodger Casement and his work in the Belgian Congo and Peru and finally his time in Germany trying to raise an Irish Brigade and failing- returning to Ireland to call off the Easter Rising and his trial and death in London

There was according to Llosa a counter protest to Casement outside Pentonville 

This was much more readable then Death in the Andes I thought about purchasing it for my mother for mothers day 

llosa has clearly read the black diaries, he states later that he believes these are private fantasies. Though it strikes me Casement could easily have molested the boys he described doing . I think this is lamp shaded with Casement getting stabbed in the Canary Islands by a sailor- who has rebuffed his advance.  

I do know an Irish Peruvian called O'Donnell I wonder if he a descendent of the person mentioned in the book

llhosa rifts on colonialism and anti colonialism as well as post colonialism, we see Iquitos after the rubber barons have left. It is not pretty. Iquitos now the center of Ausychaya drug tourism is little better. It is still distant from Lima. The city can only be reached by river or air

IIhosa interestingly notes that DeValera turned women away from the Easter rising. llosa contrasts DeValera with Casement and Yeats

Arana is such a poor loser as Peruvians always are 

Death in the Andes

A great set of vignettes sorry about the plot.

I liked the death of Senora Harcourt, and the story of the mute Pedrito Tinoco. It gets the horror of the Peruvian dirty war, against Sendero across well. Poor Pedrito is tortured and the attack on the small town, in which Sendero force people at gunpoint to stone their neighbours

 That said it is full of cliche, the Fat mob boss beating up the prostitute and the civil guard shooting them. The story of the central character bores me.
It was good, to get a glimpse of Peru, that some of my friends and neighbours new. Radio Piura and roadblocks, lighting kerosene The memory of the long legged dancer in a forgotten movie

The less said about the naked ladies and eternal hard on's plots the better