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I enjoyed it though it took me around 2.5 months. It's a thick volume with multiple characters, foreign landscape, unknown history, untranslatable and untranslated words - in short, not a fast read, but definitely worth the effort. I was also a bit intimidated by it being classified "magical realism", but it's not, in my opinion. It's a solid, impressively researched piece of historical fiction. ( )

Sometimes a really long book only elicits a very short summary from me, either because I don't have much to say, or because I don't think my reaction would fit well in a review. This book is one of the latter cases. First of all, it's huge, and not merely in size but in all the other aspects too - cast, range, and its scope. That epic quality is probably why it's been analogized to Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, but I think the plot is also somewhat similar to Victor Hugo's Ninety-Three. It's a novelistic take on the War of Canudos, a small attempt to quiet a small rebellious village that grew into the deadliest civil war in Brazilian history. In Llosa's hands, the town's dedication to an obscure charismatic religious figure becomes a stand-in for the massive changes Brazil was experiencing at the time: abolition of slavery, transition from monarchy to a republic, and attempts to secularize a deeply religious people in the name of Brazil's new motto: Order and Progress. Some of the scenes with jungle warfare also reminded me of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (or at least Apocalypse Now).

One thing that helped keep it readable was that Llosa is a master of tempo, interspersing the epic battles with the stories of these people whose lives are entwined with the ideals of the age. If ever a book deserved the adjective "apocalyptic", it would be this one. I've never read "Rebellion in the Backlands" by Euclides da Cunha, which is supposedly the primary source material, but the exact fidelity to events is almost besides the point here - the increasing attempts by the central government to conquer the rebels in the town build to a fever pitch amid the kind of hysterical millennialism that feels as real as anything. The constant doom-laden tension is only enhanced by the scenes of analepsis and prolepsis, as characters reflect on their past actions and what they meant, if mere mortals could ever attempt to understand the true magnitude of the action. I don't usually pay a lot of attention to introductions, but I wish my copy of the book had discussed the contrast in the view of politics as presented here and Llosa's real-life, somewhat neoliberal political career. It seems like quite a contrast.

Anyway, it was a remarkable book with some truly indelible scenes of faith, war, and death. Many of the book's brief scenes are as well-drawn as anything you'll read in those more famous books it's compared to. This short extract only begins to hint at its qualities:

"It's easier to imagine the death of one person than those of a hundred or a thousand," the baron murmured. "When multiplied, suffering becomes abstract. It is not easy to be moved by abstract things."
"Unless one has seen first one, then ten, a hundred, a thousand, thousands suffer," the nearsighted journalist answered. "If the death of Gentil de Castro was absurd, many of those in Canudos died for reasons no less absurd."
"How many?" the baron said in a low voice. He knew that the number would never be known, that, as with all the rest of history, the figure would be one that historians and politicians would increase and decrease in accordance with their doctrines and the advantage they could extract from it. ( )

This is the first book by Mario Vargas Llosa that I read, and I am ashamed that I never attempted to read any of his books before. Of course, as a Brazilian, I may be biased about this book, but I felt totally mesmerized by it. It is an epic telling the story of a peasant revolt on the backlands of Brazil on the late 1900’s. But, against the historical background of factual military maneuvers, political machinations and religious fundamentalism, the characters – both fictional and historical - are portrait with such care and humanity, they are certainly going to stay with me for a long time. ( )

A very good long read which has all the intensity of the most roasted Brazilian coffee you can imagine. There’s a lot of conflict here so steer clear if you’re not up for that.

Based on the true story of a hinterland rebellion in northeastern Brazil in the late 19th century known now as the War of Canudos. The coming millenium leads to the formation of a messianic cult formed almost entirely of peasants who form an early version of Occupy to form their own society building their own town of Canudos.

In the eyes of the government, doing anything they didn’t sanction invited the only solution governments understand: crush the people at all costs. And the cost is high, on both sides. This leads, ultimately to a major tragedy which should never have happened.

Vargas Llosa is, for me, unique in that he’s the only writer based south of San Diego that I can read with ease. For some reason, writers from South / Latin America seems to write in such a tortured enigmatic fashion that you wonder if they do this simply to obscure the fact that they really don’t have much of anything noteworthy to say.

Coelho, Allende, Bolano, Garcia Marquez, Paz – all of these have brought their offerings and received a Cain-like rebuke from me. Even Borges, while he may have much worthile to say, doesn’t half do a song and dance to get there.

But pick up this book and you are captivated from the start. The characterisation is vivid and vast and that includes the unforgiving landscape. The events that unfold are woven back and forth sometimes chronologically, sometimes not, like a baker kneading the dough of some fabulous bread.

But, as you discover early on, this bread will stick in the throat. As a reader you are disturbed throughout. The ending is particularly bitter.

The handling of the crisis shows that almost nothing has changed in the intervening century and a half. Aung San Suu Kyi, Assad, Mohammed bin Salman, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa have all led brutal acts of oppression against their own citizens which are very selectively condemned by our own governments. ( )