The Celtic Dream - Vargas Llosa

by Juan Guzman Romana Foreign Trade Consultant

The novel narrates this adventure that is fascinating in its argument, which involves us in a vivid story, gruesome and unimaginable dimensions of racism and living condition in the early twentieth century native people of Congo and South America. Parallel at the same time described the endless struggle of the Irish people for autonomy and declaration of free country.

The protagonist is the Irishman Roger Casement in real life was one of the first to record, speak out and denounce the atrocities that were committed in the Peruvian Amazon and in the Belgian Congo. There are two remarkable reports on his travels to both the Belgian Congo and to the Peruvian Amazon that shook the European society of his time and earned him numerous awards in several countries in Europe.

In this magic that leads us Vargas Llosa, the story weaves in two stages (in alternating chapters) which runs as consul and staff exercises (the Belgian Congo, Peruvian Amazon), and another, who tells his via-crucis in prison (in the pressure of Pentonville, London). Both lives have a Roger Casement in constant fighting and dying in a world cruel, hypocritical and convoluted that dissipates their rebellion and a natural tendency discreet-personal-perhaps revealed in the "... excerpts from diaries of questionable veracity" - which take him to voyeurism and lewd temptations that although always hidden on the assumption that the character lives and enjoy and suddenly, with malice and animosity surfaced after his betrayal and arrest in 1916.
I recommend this novel.