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chairmanbernanke's review against another edition
3.0
The political and independent choices of one man, seen by another.
dhanushgopinath's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.5
elizaahhh's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
an author investigates a failed uprising from 25 years ago and switches back and forth between his investigation and the fictionalized events. it starts off dry and hard to follow but gets more and more interesting as it goes. the narrative shows an understanding of leftist politics built by actual experience, but on top on a foundation of real venom. some weird stuff about queer people in here too.
rick_williams's review against another edition
5.0
This is a superb, complex, visceral novel which is as much about the nature of story-telling as about the events and individuals it describes; a failed revolution in Peru. The time frame shifts back and forth, often mid-paragraph, between the novelist’s present day Peru (also in part fictionalised) and the date, a couple of decades earlier, of the action that forms the story. We are told again and again that the narrator is writing a novel, not a biography or history book, and that he is in search of the facts solely so that he can know what he is discarding when he ignores or changes events. But facts are not so easy to come by. Each person’s telling of events is bound up with self-interest, fallible memories, political agendas. Even the narrator, the traditionally objective voice, is perhaps not to be trusted.
One is plunged deep into the action, whether that be lying awake at night with the sounds, heat and smell of Lima, gasping for breath in the altitude of Jauja, or recoiling from the horror of Lurigancho prison. The feeling is a dreamlike juxtaposition of physical immersion in a dysfunctional society with a doomed attempt to change it and a nagging doubt as to what is real and what is not.
One is plunged deep into the action, whether that be lying awake at night with the sounds, heat and smell of Lima, gasping for breath in the altitude of Jauja, or recoiling from the horror of Lurigancho prison. The feeling is a dreamlike juxtaposition of physical immersion in a dysfunctional society with a doomed attempt to change it and a nagging doubt as to what is real and what is not.
lori85's review against another edition
2.0
Lame ripoff of [b:The Real Life of Sebastian Knight|71552|The Real Life of Sebastian Knight|Vladimir Nabokov|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348436904s/71552.jpg|1180092].
lowercasepoet's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
davison13's review against another edition
3.0
I have mixed feelings about this book. Because it was a required reading for school and I had to finish it within a short amount of time, the experience of reading was not as enjoyable as it could've been. But as tempted as I am to shit on it, it was actually a good book, and I liked it. The narrative was interesting, switching between past to present and 1st to 3rd narration. It did take me a while to get used to it, as it would suddenly switch within a conversation without warning. It's a very different writing style than what i've read before. Overall, it's a decent book. I think it did a good job portraying the cultural and social state of Peru at this time, and it's not like any historical fiction book (if you can call it that) I've ever read.
delaguila19's review against another edition
3.0
No sè no me convenciò mucho la historia de rebelion contada por Mario vargas llosa, estuvo interesante pero creo que le faltò mas de su estilo, no pude reconocerlo por gaias enteras.
nonabgo's review against another edition
4.0
I have never encountered a Llosa book I did not like. The man has my heart and I think he can do no wrong. However, for a brief moment of two chapters, I was certain I would hate "Mayta".
The beginning is tedious, or at least it was for me. This novel is weirdly constructed - not only do the events happen on two different temporal planes, but these planes are intertwined in such a fashion that it is hard, without employing all your attention, to differentiate between them. We're (I, at least) used to historical novels that ping-pong between eras, but the transition is usually clearly marked, either by distinct paragraphs or different chapters. Mr Llosa is not that boring. He jumps back and forth between the two eras in the same paragraph, even in the same sentence sometimes.
There's this author writing a novel based on Alejandro Mayta's life. He does so by interviewing the people who knew Mayta (supposedly and old schoolmate of this unnamed author and a communist militant), who organized an attempted "revolution" and has now been missing for years. As the respondents tell their recollections, Mayta's voice intervenes and tells the story from his perspective - so, essentially, we have multiple first-person POVs: the author's (who describes his encounters with Mayta's co-conspirators), the interviewed persons', a different one in every chapter (who tell the story from their perspective and not always truthfully) and Mayta's (who jumps in to tell his story in between the others).
So a paragraph might start with the author asking someone about the events, that person responds, but sometime in the middle of the story, Mayta takes over with his version. And neither of them is a reliable teller, so in the end, nothing is made clear. Confusing, I know, but also what a stroke of genius!
I see this novel as a big fat parody of the "revolutionary" attempts in Peru. As it happens, there were quite a lot of organizations/ groups/ parties who called themselves communist, just as in this novel. Llosa portrays a state of disorganization that is purely laughable. There's Trotskyites, Leninists, Stalinists and probably other factions, each of them claiming to be the "true" communist party, but neither being very organized or willing to so more than meet and print flyers. And then here comes this idealist guy who is, up to one point, part of a 7-person "communist party", who takes it upon himself to actually organize a sort-of coup, without having any support other than that of a jail lieutenant and a few school boys.
It's absurdity at it's best and as someone who grew up in a former communist country, I laughed and laughed and laughed at Mayta's idealism and actions.
In fact, everything about this novel is absurd. We slowly find out that the author is not writing Mayta's biography, but a dystopian novel extremely loosely based on Mayta's life, but he still tries to find out the truth despite having absolutely no intention in using it. Everything is contradictory, there are no two people who tell the same truth, inspiring one character to ask whether history can be truly known, or is it just as fictitious as a novel. And we keep hoping until the end that Mayta himself, once the author finds him and meets him in person, is able to clear everything up, but he ends up being just as unreliable as the others and not knowing, despite being in the middle of the action, who did what and to what purpose.
Llosa takes us on a trip through Lima and Jauja in different times, describing in a cinematic fashion a not-so-pretty image of Peru. We're taken to slums and villages that don't have electricity or water, to grand buildings that outlive their glory years by sharing the same space with garbage piles. Nothing is beautiful, everything is in a state of decay that the people have learned to live with, not even minding the ever-growing waste. Poverty, terrorism, crime is everywhere - but somehow Llosa's dark humor manages to overshadow everything.
Llosa is a master of words (and I must also applaud the Romanian translator, Mihai Cantuniari, for the impeccable translation). His phrasing is stunning, mixing academic constructions with jargon and popular speech in a seamless fashion that only enhances the absurdity of the story. The dialogue is exactly to the extent that it has to be, the descriptive passages are just enough to build the atmosphere, but not to much to bore the reader. I just cannot recommend him enough. He - and this novel - are such gems of contemporary literature!
The beginning is tedious, or at least it was for me. This novel is weirdly constructed - not only do the events happen on two different temporal planes, but these planes are intertwined in such a fashion that it is hard, without employing all your attention, to differentiate between them. We're (I, at least) used to historical novels that ping-pong between eras, but the transition is usually clearly marked, either by distinct paragraphs or different chapters. Mr Llosa is not that boring. He jumps back and forth between the two eras in the same paragraph, even in the same sentence sometimes.
There's this author writing a novel based on Alejandro Mayta's life. He does so by interviewing the people who knew Mayta (supposedly and old schoolmate of this unnamed author and a communist militant), who organized an attempted "revolution" and has now been missing for years. As the respondents tell their recollections, Mayta's voice intervenes and tells the story from his perspective - so, essentially, we have multiple first-person POVs: the author's (who describes his encounters with Mayta's co-conspirators), the interviewed persons', a different one in every chapter (who tell the story from their perspective and not always truthfully) and Mayta's (who jumps in to tell his story in between the others).
So a paragraph might start with the author asking someone about the events, that person responds, but sometime in the middle of the story, Mayta takes over with his version. And neither of them is a reliable teller, so in the end, nothing is made clear. Confusing, I know, but also what a stroke of genius!
I see this novel as a big fat parody of the "revolutionary" attempts in Peru. As it happens, there were quite a lot of organizations/ groups/ parties who called themselves communist, just as in this novel. Llosa portrays a state of disorganization that is purely laughable. There's Trotskyites, Leninists, Stalinists and probably other factions, each of them claiming to be the "true" communist party, but neither being very organized or willing to so more than meet and print flyers. And then here comes this idealist guy who is, up to one point, part of a 7-person "communist party", who takes it upon himself to actually organize a sort-of coup, without having any support other than that of a jail lieutenant and a few school boys.
It's absurdity at it's best and as someone who grew up in a former communist country, I laughed and laughed and laughed at Mayta's idealism and actions.
In fact, everything about this novel is absurd. We slowly find out that the author is not writing Mayta's biography, but a dystopian novel extremely loosely based on Mayta's life, but he still tries to find out the truth despite having absolutely no intention in using it. Everything is contradictory, there are no two people who tell the same truth, inspiring one character to ask whether history can be truly known, or is it just as fictitious as a novel. And we keep hoping until the end that Mayta himself, once the author finds him and meets him in person, is able to clear everything up, but he ends up being just as unreliable as the others and not knowing, despite being in the middle of the action, who did what and to what purpose.
Llosa takes us on a trip through Lima and Jauja in different times, describing in a cinematic fashion a not-so-pretty image of Peru. We're taken to slums and villages that don't have electricity or water, to grand buildings that outlive their glory years by sharing the same space with garbage piles. Nothing is beautiful, everything is in a state of decay that the people have learned to live with, not even minding the ever-growing waste. Poverty, terrorism, crime is everywhere - but somehow Llosa's dark humor manages to overshadow everything.
Llosa is a master of words (and I must also applaud the Romanian translator, Mihai Cantuniari, for the impeccable translation). His phrasing is stunning, mixing academic constructions with jargon and popular speech in a seamless fashion that only enhances the absurdity of the story. The dialogue is exactly to the extent that it has to be, the descriptive passages are just enough to build the atmosphere, but not to much to bore the reader. I just cannot recommend him enough. He - and this novel - are such gems of contemporary literature!
tessaays's review against another edition
2.0
Sigh, I so wanted to love this book, but it was just an absolute slog to get through. Vargas Llosa is clearly a technical master, but it felt as if he was a concert pianist trying to play someone else’s poorly composed music - you KNOW he’s incredible at what he does, but ultimately it just had no heart, and you couldn’t stay engaged. I almost gave up several times. It got better towards the end, but the first three-quarters of the plot spent all its energy on agonisingly detailed interrogation of the early socialist movement in Peru (a subject that’s ALREADY tough to get into if you’re not a historian or a specialist) and didn’t have enough plot or human interest to actually be readable. I also couldn’t get used to the perspective change between the narrator and Mayta. It’s clever and interesting (places history in the present, brings the narrator into “direct” contact with his subject, interesting temporal play, etc etc) but it’s also jarring and makes many of the early chapters near-unreadable. I had to stop and re-read a page tens of times because I couldn’t pinpoint where the perspective changed from current to historical, even when I was looking for it. I’m ok with doing some work as a reader but this was just too much, and it really ruined the experience for me. Overall - a shame. I had high expectations.