As would be expected from a publication by National Geographic, this book has beautiful pictures covering all regions of the Andes Mountains. Buyers should take note, however, that this book focuses more heavily on portraits of the people in these South American countries than on panoramic vistas of the Andes Mountains themselves (review the cover of this book to see the main focus). Also, too many blank pages for my tastes. Otherwise, an exquisite book.

This is a series of breathtaking photos of the Andes range from the Caribbean to Patagonia. There are stunning photos of the mountains and heart-wrenching photos of earthquake survivors as well as many photos of everyday life. Mario Vargas Llosa, the famous Peruvian author, contributes "inventions" imagining subjects thoughts, feelings, attitudes and stories. This National Geographic book, photographed by Pablo Corral Vega, makes a wonderful tour of the majestic mountains and haunting coutryside of the Andes.

The Time of the Hero is one of the best books of our time, and ideal for The American Scholar. Llosa's writing style incorporates insights about life, war, love, fraternity, and humanity in a characteristically intelligent way. The subject matter is both informative and universal, and the presentation is unique and intellectually appealing. The book is multi-faceted, layered, and intriguing. Unfortunately, the translation takes so much away from the story. It is necessary to either read the book in the original Spanish, entitled La Ciudad y los perros, or read it with a grain of salt, always trying to read the language not as it appears on the page, but as Llosa wrote it.

This is not the best of Vargas' books. Death in the Andes is definitely better. However, this is not to say that Time of the Hero is not interesting. The first 50 pages are so are a little boring, but after that, the plots really starts moving. Read carefully. Some plots go nowhere, some are everything. By the end, you really care about the central characters, which is the sign of a good book.

I rate this book 10, because it embodies in one text a story so powerful from a personal and political point of view. The story deals with a group of army cadets in Lima, their pasts and their presents, and what will potentially be a future shaped for them by the serious injury of one of their troop while on army manouvers. The story that unfolds from this, interwoven with the power struggle that goes on between the forces of good and humanity and evil faceless silence of the army leaves you breathless. Not everyone will appreciate this book, but there are those out there that owe it to themselves to read this book and learn. Not just about peruvians themselves, but the deep forces of power, ruthlessness and betrayal that power the human race itself

Leí este libro ya hace bastantes años, y me sorprende que esté en la lista de 5 estrellas (aunque ya no, después de ésta su reseña). Si mal no recuerdo, el libro trata de un muchachito que siente atracción por su desde luego jóven y bella madrastra. Aparte de eso, no sucede nada.

Si por lo menos hubiera sido erótica la novela, bueno, tendría su chiste. Sin embargo, las secciones dizque eróticas sonaban falsas y forzadas, como si Vargas Llosa estuviera haciendo un esfuerzo conciente por no sentir vergüenza. En cuanto al resto de la novela, poco inspirada con un lenguaje aburrido.

Que excelente libro. Una de las novelas mas buenas que he leido en mi vida, te mantiene pegado todo el tiempo, sin poder soltarlo. Vargas Llosa, como siempre, demuestra como sigue siendo uno de los titanes de la literatura latina. Its a must have. Siendo literatura erotica, no es para los de espiritu susceptible o facilmente ofendido.

Excellent vivid description of such hidden emotions as sensuality, passion, romance, eroticsm, touch, foreplay, desire, lust, and more. A lesson is sensuality! Never realized Mario had such hidden talent; must be a professor in the art of love-making. The structure and form is, like all his books, of superior style... the ending is somehow unexpected!!!

This is one of the best books of Mario Vargas Llosa. It relates the life of the Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, one of the most cruel and ruthless Latin American tyrants of the last century. Vargas Llosa did a good research job for the novel. In fact, one does not know what is fiction and what is history. That mix is precisely what makes the novel a masterpiece!

This is a story set around the life and death of Rafael Trujillo who was a brutal Latin style dictator of the Dominican Republic for decades until his assassination in the early sixties. There are three views in this novel which alternate from chapter to chapter, the first is Trujillo himself in the last days of his life, 70 years old and aging fast. We see him as he reminisces about his life & his rise to power, used by the U.S. and trained by the marines originally to be a force against Cuba. Another view is through the eyes of Trujillo's assassins, all previously his henchmen, now working in clandestine groups against the dictator, and their individual stories. The character that begins and ends the novel is purely fictional, Urania, a 49 yr. old woman with a great career in the World Trade Organization and the only female side in this extremely macho novel. Urania has returned to the Dominican Republic after 35 years away to see her father, an old man now who was one of Trujillo's top yes men during his reign of terror.

This is book about human motivations and how ordinary people become hypnotized by evil. It is a universal story of the dictator everywhere and a lesson in understanding how it could happen.

Another great one from Llosa that defies genre, it is a thriller, an historical novel, a book about politics, and offers stark, penetrating insights into human nature.

Although The Feast of the Goat is not my favorite Mario Vargas Llosa novel, I think it is his most masterful.

In The Feast of the Goat, Vargas Llosa explores life in the Dominican Republic under the reign of the dictator, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina and the aftermath of his assassination on 30 May 1961.

Trujillo, who was referred to as "the Goat," was trained by the United States Marines and it was United States financial backing that kept him in power from the 1930s through the 1950s. Although Trujillo's regime was marked by corruption and brutality, the United States saw it as far less threatening than communism under Fidel Castro.

To construct the intricate plot of The Feast of the Goat, Vargas Llosa has used a device known as a braid. This particular braid consists of three strands and many, many viewpoints, making this quite a "big book."

The strand I found most intriguing is the only one that is, I think, fictional. It is the story of Urania Cabral, a woman who is returning to the Dominican Republic after 35 years in self-imposed exile. Her story consists mainly of past events, told through flashbacks. We are not exactly sure why Urania returns and neither is she. She tells her father, Augustin Cabral, who had been a high-ranking official in Trujillo's government, that she never intended to return, not even to bury him.

As Augustin lies silent due to a stroke, Urania recounts the events that lead to her departure at the age of fourteen, just two weeks before Trujillo's assassination. It is obvious that Urania hates her father, and readers learn the reason why before the characters in the book do.

Another fascinating strand in Vargas Llosa's braid traces the last day of Trujillo's life. We know that he was obsessed with cleanliness, appearance, order and discipline. Just how obsessed becomes clear as we read the book. In The Feast of the Goat, Vargas Llosa has blended the historical with the speculative and has
come up with a fascinating and vivid portrait of a man who was one of history's most egotistical, tyrannical and debased leaders.

The third strand of Vargas Llosa's braid centers on those who are plotting the assassination of Trujillo. Vargas Llosa ups the suspense by not beginning this narrative until a few hours prior to the assassination and by giving each of the assassins his own perspective on his involvement in the plot. We know, of course, how this plot strand ends. Vargas Llosa, however, keeps momentum high by graphically recounting the barbarous fate of the assassins. Be warned: this is definitely not a book for the faint-of-heart. Simply because we already know how this novel comes out, from a historical perspective, does not mean we can simply resign ourselves to the horror.

Vargas Llosa lets us know that there are those who lament the assassination of Trujillo, as brutal as he was. One of the characters laments that people lived better during Trujillo's regime and that there were more jobs and less crime. In the weeks and months following the assassination, the horror, the corruption and the fear that accompanied Trujillo's regime seem to have been forgotten. Perhaps this is a part of this masterful novel's message. If so, it is a masterful touch, for it only serves to make the horror all that more real and despicable.

I don't think anyone can read this masterpiece of a book and not come away changed. I certainly didn't. The Feast of the Goat is not a pretty book, but it is one that is extremely important and one that I will never forget.

First this is a crisp short book that is well worth the time to read. The setting alone is quite different from most mysteries/police procedurals. A peruvian Air Force Airman is brutally murdered and two local Guardia Civil Policeman must find the killer before their small town goes crazy thinking they are protecting the "big guys." They get no help from the Air Force officials. Character devleopment is remarkably good for such a short book and you will grow to appreciate Lituma and the Lieutenant and hope that the first LLosa mystery will include more stories of this pair. My only complaint is that 10 bucks is a lot to ask for a book that will take you 3 hours to read.

The time is the 1950s, the place is Peru, and the victim is a young air force enlisted man named Palomino Molero, in Mario Vargas Llosa's spare, tightly written and excellently constructed whodunit. Palomino Molero, eighteen years old, a guitar player who enchanted everyone for miles around singing boleros, is found brutally tortured and murdered near a local air force base. Two civil guards, Officer Lituma and Lieutenant Silva, try to unravel the crime. Rumors abound all over the place; the victim was involved in smuggling or the like and the higher-ups are covering up the perpetrators. But when Silva and Lituma find out that what Palomino Molero was involved in was not smuggling but a love affair with the daughter of his base commander, the plot thickens in all kinds of ways. Vargas Llosa's book is not only a crime novel but a bitter indictment of the social/racial conflicts of modern Peru, where an airman cannot fall in love with the daughter of a colonel, especially if she is white and he is a cholo (half-breed). Vargas Llosa knows how to leaven his story with comic relief; Lieutenant Silva is hopelessly in love with and shamelessly pursuing the respectably married Dona Adriana, and her revenge on him for his presumption is a riot. The murder is solved, but the townspeople won't accept the truth, and insist that they were right all along; there were "higher-ups" involved. "Higher-ups" indeed. It would be a crime in itself to give the solution away and I'm not going to; suffice to say that Vargas Llosa has written a gem of a murder mystery with an ingenious plot twist. It's a very short novel and shows again that some of the best things come in small packages.

This book reminds me of "chronicle of a death foretold" - you may think this is too much of a overdraft but this is just pure sunshine. The translation is just as effective as the plot. The main investigators in the case Lituma and Lieutenant Silva represent a class who takes the insult in what ever form it may be but do not nudge back - gives back a subtle reply which gives the final twist. The author has been able to achieve a twist inside a twist which keeps us wondering at the end about the real topic of the book, which is suppose to be a detective story. The plot changes from an investigation story to traumatic social relations living history. Sometimes I was thinking - is this father Brown with a little bit of Tango? The death of Palomino Molero does not represent a simple case of torture and murder but a social dilemma of hatrate which has its grips so deeply rooted that sometimes people do not even question it . I promise you will enjoy this book.

Tengo que admitir que quede tristemente decepcionado al leer este libro. Considero a Vargas Llosa como uno de los mejores escritores latinoamericanos, pero definitavemente esta obra no es la mejor. Sin no fuese por el estilo narrativo inconfundible de Vargas Llosa, dejo este libro por la mitad!!

Este libro es una continuación de Elogio de la madrastra y creo que en este casi se aplica aquello de que segundas partes nunca fueron buenas. Al menos no tan buenas. En mi opinión, el erotismo aparece aquí bastante domado y tiene la desventaja de que el lector de Elogio sabe ya cual es el motivo principal de la novela: el incesto o pedofilia existente entre Fonchito y Lucrecia. En la primara novela esto es sorprendente y agrega un sabor exquisito a la trama pero aquí lo único que entretiene son las escenas donde Fonchito actúa como el pintor austriaco Egon Schiele (a quien admira y del que invariablemente lleva un libro de sus pinturas en su mochila) y "obliga" a Lucrecia y la criada a posar como en las pinturas más atrevidas del pintor. Sin embargo, la novela vale la pena leerla.

este libro es bien entretenido y picaro y para mi muestra al hombre del nuevo milenio, un hombre normal, que da rienda suelta a sus fantasias y que esta dispuesto a dejar quie su esposa las comparta, es muy entretenido ya que el autor no deja caer el tono y el libro se mantiene a traves de sus trescientas paginas. muy recomendado. Luis Mendez

I read it for the first time years ago, and now that I am older, I wish to re-read. This one is one of those I wished I had bought and not borrowed!

Mario Vargas Llosa writes his first erotic novel. Somethemes in this book reflect those of his more serious work.This novella is in part a commentary on race and class. . . especially the upper class. . . in modern Peru. Mostly, however, this story of a pre-adolescent boy's sexual attraction to his stepmother pokes fun at sexual mores of the Peruvian elite and and the sexual idiosyncracies of the characters. Vargas Llosa's narrative skill is very much in evidence here; the craft of this book will please readers of his better-known works. Published in Engish as In Praise of the Stepmother.

The Cubs is a story about the life of a boy who suffers an accidental castration. The emotions of the boy can be felt and you see his change of attitude towards life. It has twists and turns that make The Cubs unpredictable and interesting. The story revolves around the boy and his group of friends from school.

The other stories range from different topics but most of them are short but detailed at the same time. Most of them will leave you satisfied and looking for more book by Vargas Llosa.

reviewed by Mauricio de la Garza

I was born in Argentina, and finaly I've found a book that explains many of the problems that are common to latin america and the typical latin american ideologies. Written with great humour in which the sad reality is analysed.
Very recommended. (If you are pro-left, try to read it anyway, maybe, you can recognize a few mistakes in your contradictory ideology)

I consider this book to be the best social-political-economical analysis of the Latin American world. From a very critical and humorous standpoint it explains the latin american reality and points to a clear path to overcome its economic and political burdens and take its place in the stage of the modern globalized world.

La etica en que nos desenvolvemos en latinoamerica considera como pecado mortal buscar la riqueza como fruto del trabajo... Y ahi es donde ya empezamos mal... Mas aun, siguiendo esa linea de razonamiento (que viene desde la iglesia catolica o el comunismo...), se sataniza a quien aun por fruto de su trabajo duro y honesto acumula riquezas para su beneficio. Es asi como surgen pseudoideologias politicas en las cuales se sugiere abiertamente que se le debe quitar al rico para darle al pobre mediante "programas sociales." Lo malo es que esos programas no funcionan y eventualmente se forma una cultura de la violencia donde el robar y el mendigar se justifican porque el gobierno no hace nada y los ricos son unos hijos de puta.

La radiografia de latinoamerica es definitivamente implacable y certera. Lo mismo se puede decir de la critica que ellos hacen de Eduardo Galeano. Sin embargo, no dejan estos autores una luz, aunque sea tenua, de esperanza para Latinoamerica. Despues de terminar el texto senti cierta sensacion de derrota que no me pude quitar (y eso que vivo en el pais de los gringos...)

Cuestionar los supuestos es importante para moverse hacia el futuro. Pero hay que crear nuevos paradigmas o conjunto de principios para construir una nueva realidad.

Que futuro hay para Latinoamerica?

"The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto" is a demonstrative example of Mario Vargas Llosa's vast imagination. In this book, Vargas Llosa uses the medium of notebooks -- diaries of fantasy, in essence -- to convey a series of sexual and erotic tales, written by his character, Don Rigoberto. Some of the stories are quite compelling and draw in the reader with terrific success. But, as the narrative unfolds, it becomes apparent that the tales in Don Rigoberto's notebooks do not sufficiently intertwine. In fact, they are fantasies, often completely unrelated to the previous, except in their erotic content. As a result, the narrative is not constructed chapter-by-chapter; rather it consists of a hodge-podge collection of freewritings, scribbled in a notebook, and scattered around an ongoing tale (which begins each chapter) of the exotic relationship between his wife and son. Despite the complex fantasies of the notebooks, it becomes apparent that disjointed stories in scrawled notepads, while interesting, are not a sufficiently successful narrative device. The reader is left wanting to see the various parts come together. But most do not.

The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto by Mario Vargas Llosa, translated by Edith Grossman (FSG, 259 pages, $23, 1998). by Nicholas Patterson

"I read, look at my pictures, review and add to my notebooks . . . but, above all, I fantasize. I dream. I construct a better reality . . . Only when I am in that world, in that company, do I exist, for then I am joyful and content," (p. 226) explains the title character of The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto near the end of the novel. This explanation helps make sense of a novel where the line between fantasy and reality is often blurred and the former seems more real than the latter. The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto is divided between the story of a bizarre love triangle (Rigoberto, his estranged wife Lucrecia, and his young son Alfonso), the fantasies and letters Don Rigoberto writes in his notebooks, and to a lesser extent Lucrecia's dreams. The Notebooks takes up where Llosa's In Praise of the Stepmother (FSG, 1990) left off: Rigoberto and Lucrecia have separated after Rigoberto discovers that Alfonso (or Fonchito) has seduced his stepmother (though Fonchito's age is never precisely given, he is portrayed as being somewhere between 10 and 13 years old). Having succeeded in his seduction and in publicizing it to his father through an essay in the Stepmother, Fonchito decides to reunite Rigoberto and Lucrecia in the Notebooks. Fonchito re-enters Lucrecia's life and through conversations about the life and work of his idol, the painter Egon Schiele, tries to convince her to get back together with Rigoberto. Fonchito provides a further catalyst for the couple's reunion by writing two series of 10 anonymous letters to Lucrecia and Rigoberto which each mistake as being written by their spouse. Intertwined with the story of Fonchito's machinations are a series of Rigoberto's and Lucrecia's late night meditations, fantasies, and dreams. Rigoberto, a mild mannered insurance executive, escapes his mundane reality through elaborate games and fantasies involving his missing wife. Physically faithful to his wife, Rigoberto imagines her in a series of romantic interludes with among others: "a twin brother of mine whom I invented, a Corsican brother, in an orgy. With a castrated motorcyclist. You were a law professor in Virginia, and you corrupted a saintly jurist. You made love to the wife of the Algerian ambassador in a steambath. Your feet maddened a French fetishist of the eighteenth century. . . we were in a Mexican brothel with a mulatta who pulled off one of my ears in a single bite." (p. 253-4) Llosa weaves these fantasies together with real life events so skillfully that it isn't until near the end of the book that one knows what has happened and what has been imagined. This ambiguity between fact and fiction, which Llosa has employed in previous novels including Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, emphasizes the idea that the life of the mind is as, and often more, important than the life of the body. Through imagination one can rise above everyday life and create a world as one wants it to be. Llosa suggests that love arises from being able to share this world with another. When Rigoberto tells Lucrecia about his fantasies near the end of the book, Lucrecia responds: "I want details . . . all of them, even the tiniest. What I did, what I ate, what was done to me." (P. 253) Though The Notebooks is filled with sensual and sexual fantasies it is not pornographic. Llosa pulls off this difficult feat by relating erotic work without resorting to graphic imagery (Rigoberto writes a scathing "Letter to the Reader of Playboy" which rails against people who limit their sexual imagination by relying on pornography). The novel drags a little near the end as Rigoberto delves perhaps a little to deeply into a foot fetish fantasy. However, in general, the book has a very quick and exciting pace, in part due to Edith Grossman's translation. Llosa's The Notebooks is an elegant exploration of the psychology of love and desire.

...fantasy within fiction, eroticism within contempt for societal `norms'....

this compelling book is an erotic lace-work of the extremely hedonistic yet solitary don rigoberto's mind of absurd surreal life as insurance drone to his idealistic romance with his wife lucretia. interrupted by devil-child.

the themes within themes of this book are highly complex, including an intriguing introduction to egon schieles' artistry. the surprises are endless, as are his essays from life-as-defined-by leisure to the erotic affects of urination.

it is hard to summarise this novel. it covers so many issues that it is a wonder it is only contained within 259 pages. i was craving so much more at the end. mario vargas llosa is a genius once again.