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A review by uhambe_nami
El sueño del celta by Mario Vargas Llosa
3.0
El sueño del celta (Dream of the Celt) is the story of Roger Casement who exposed the atrocities committed by King Leopold II in Congo and by Julio Arana's rubber company in the Peruvian Amazon, and was executed for treason in 1916 after his involvement with the Irish independence movement.
Vargas Llosa chose to tell this story in the format of a historical novel. At the opening of the novel, we find Casement in his prison cell, longing for a bath and musing over the events of his life. What follows is an overview of his experiences in Congo, where he met with Henry M. Stanley and with Joseph Conrad and slowly became aware of the awful reality of slavery and exploitation of the Congolese; in the Amazon where indigenous workers were forced to collect rubber under horrible circumstances, and finally his activities for the Irish independence movement. The novel doesn't shy away from the issues around his homosexuality that were revealed through his "Black Diaries" with cryptic entries such as "Public bathroom. Enormous, very hard, at least nine inches" which were considered scandalous at that time and (unfairly, I think) used against him at his trial.
Vargas Llosa was a journalist before he became a writer, and it shows. He certainly did his research well, but that is where the problem lies with the book. The historical facts are summed up as if it were a collage of encyclopaedia entries and newspaper clippings, full of facts, dates and more facts. After pages and pages of historical facts, it becomes tedious and one feels tempted to skim through the information rather than reading it all line by line.
Which is a pity, because the history of Roger Casement is the story of an extraordinary man whose courage and battle for human rights should never be forgotten.
Vargas Llosa chose to tell this story in the format of a historical novel. At the opening of the novel, we find Casement in his prison cell, longing for a bath and musing over the events of his life. What follows is an overview of his experiences in Congo, where he met with Henry M. Stanley and with Joseph Conrad and slowly became aware of the awful reality of slavery and exploitation of the Congolese; in the Amazon where indigenous workers were forced to collect rubber under horrible circumstances, and finally his activities for the Irish independence movement. The novel doesn't shy away from the issues around his homosexuality that were revealed through his "Black Diaries" with cryptic entries such as "Public bathroom. Enormous, very hard, at least nine inches" which were considered scandalous at that time and (unfairly, I think) used against him at his trial.
Vargas Llosa was a journalist before he became a writer, and it shows. He certainly did his research well, but that is where the problem lies with the book. The historical facts are summed up as if it were a collage of encyclopaedia entries and newspaper clippings, full of facts, dates and more facts. After pages and pages of historical facts, it becomes tedious and one feels tempted to skim through the information rather than reading it all line by line.
Which is a pity, because the history of Roger Casement is the story of an extraordinary man whose courage and battle for human rights should never be forgotten.