El Sueno del Celta / The Dream of the Celt (Spanish Edition)

On August 3, 1916, Irish revolutionary Roger Casement was hanged for treason after being caught trying to run guns from Germany to Ireland. The son of a Protestant, Casement was actually a British consul who was working in Africa for commercial interests in the service of the crown. The abuses he investigated in the Congo deeply affected him, as did the abuses of Indians extracting rubber in the Putomayo, on the Peruvian border with Colombia. His keen understanding of colonialism led him to expose and denounce its crimes, and he became a separatist rebel. Nobel laureate Vargas Llosa begins Casement fictionalized biography in a prison cell, where in 1916 he hoped to receive a pardon, only to learn from his legal team that Scotland Yard had discovered his alleged diaries. The diaries, which have never been definitively confirmed to be Casement's, had damning evidence against him, as well as detailed accounts of homosexual affairs, which at the time were used to discredit and smear him. Vargas Llosa's vivid language and exquisite storytelling grabs readers and brings them into that cramped cell and indeed straight into Casement's racing mind as he wonders what will become of him. He paints a tangible, three-dimensional portrait of Casement-a man disgraced, utterly defeated, and ultimately executed-on a raw and realistic canvas devoid of hope. In presenting such an honest and faithful account of this fallen man, Vargas Llosa returns to him his dignity. Strongly recommended for academic and public libraries, as well as scholars and literature and history students.—Vivian Gómez, Woodside, NY