Rating: 
Summary: A good rewrite
Review: The book is well written yet it saddens me to see that a master author can take such liberties with the research and hard work of others and claim them as his work.Bravo!
Rating: 
Summary: The Feast of the Goat
Review: The book was very good reading, especially if you are into history. While the book is fictional it does touch on the events of Trujillo's final day.
Rating:
Summary: Remembering Trujillo
Review: The fact that Mario Vargas Llosa spent so much effort creating this book, and its triple-visioned perspective of an interesting and ultimately vicious era in the history of the Dominican Republic, speaks to Llosa's artistic genius. Although as a general reader, I can't know exactly what is factual and what is fiction in this account, I can be drawn into the tenor of the times, the terror that ruled the nation, and the feeling of complete domination of a society by a single, overpowering individual with an iron will and an unpitying regard for his loyal opposition. We see Trujillo at his worst, not as the man who "saved the nation" from Haitian and communist rule, but as a murderer, rapist, manipulator, and sadist. The damage he inflicted has resonated for decades, and Llosa implicitly understands this as he details the lives of those who suffered and courageously sought to change their society.
Considering the recent news of Saddam's atrocities and extremes, this book is very timely in detailing the madness of dictators and the struggles of their victims. I am grateful that Mario Vargas Llosa, an artist of world-class stature, wrote this book. It is now a living record of a dark episode in history, not to be forgotten, and of the evil extremes in human nature.
Rating: 
Summary: A Masterpiece (Review of the Spanish Version)
Review: The Feast of the Goat (La Fiesta del Chivo) is the best novel I've read since Alessandro Baricco's Seta. It is written with skillful technique and beautiful rhythm. The story line (three distinct but intimately intertwined threads) advances at a meticulate yet inexorable pace, speeding up gradually until it reaches a climax of human heroism, savagery and disgust. The ending, however, regains a sense of peace as the reader is let out safely from the grips of Vargas Llosa's prose. One of the many strong points of the book is that all attempts by the reader to dissect fiction from fact come up short. There is no need for such dissection, though. The suffering is real and so are the heroism, cowardice, love, revenge, political machinations, and the virile and vicious "trujillismo" that permeate the story. I will say no more; read the book and you will understand.
Rating:
Summary: timely
Review: The Feast of the Goat is a novel of the final days of Dominican strongman Rafael Trujillo's regime
and of the corrupting effect that his brutal rule had on his closest associates. Mario Vargas Llosa pulls
no punches in showing the physical torture that Trujillo used to combat his enemies and the mind
games and sexual depredations that he used to humiliate and control his "allies". But he also makes
Trujillo a compelling, though perhaps not sympathetic, figure and he extends the story long enough
after Trujillo's assassination to let us see that he had created an environment in which it was possible
for him to be succeeded by relatively democratic government. In the process, he forces us to confront
one of the most difficult paradoxes that we face as liberal democrats (a category in which we can
include virtually all Americans) : that authoritarian rule, of the kind that Trujillo provided, though we
find it repellent in many particulars, may be a vital stepping stone as underdeveloped nations progress
towards modernity. The first formulation of this idea that I'm aware of is Jeanne Kirkpatrick's influential 1979 essay in
Commentary, "Dictatorships and Double Standards", in which she differentiated between totalitarian
governments, like communist ones, which sought to destroy every institution and vestige of traditional
society in order to replace them with their own variants, as opposed to authoritarian ones, like
Trujillo's, which, though they were quite repressive and even murderous, maintained traditional
institutions--church, aristocracy, military, etc.--and at least paid lip service to the idea of democracy,
making it easier for them to eventually evolve into one. Today, the most effective advocate for the
efficacy of such authoritarian regimes is probably Robert D. Kaplan, who makes no bones about his
belief that some societies may simply not have developed sufficiently to even handle the freedoms that
democracy brings with it. I've reviewed both their books elsewhere, so I'll not replow old ground
here. We should merely note that whether intentionally or not, Mr. Vargas Llosa's novel plays out almost
exactly the drama that Ms Kirkpatrick and Mr. Kaplan have described : Trujillo initially provided the
stability that was necessary for the Dominican Republic to develop economically and socially, but his
very success eventually made his continued rule untenable, as he lost the support of the middle class
that he had created, the institutions that he had left in place (specifically the Catholic Church), and the
democratic friend that he had cultivated (the United States). Despite a spotty record on human rights
and democracy and an intervention by the American military, the Dominican Republic in subsequent
years has remained relatively stable internally, has remained cooperative with the United States, and
has performed better economically than most of its neighbors. Those of us who adhere to the "realist"
school of foreign policy that Kirkpatrick and Kaplan espouse would consider Trujillo's legacy, though
mixed, to be more favorable than not. The great service that Mr. Vargas Llosa provides here though is to rub our noses in the corruption, the
crimes, the blood and the corpses that supporting a leader like Trujillo necessarily entails. It may not
change the final results of the equation, and it needn't, but it does compel us to tote up the human costs
of this terrible moral calculus. This is a very good thing. More important, it is a timely thing. We
are entering a period of years where we may well have to make similar calculations in the Islamic
world, where we may need to support governments (Turkey's for example) that do not conform to the
strict democratic processes and human rights norms that we would like to see in an ideal world, having
determined that, in the long run, such temporarily over repressive governments will likely evolve into
the types of liberal democratic systems that we favor. This tolerance for authoritarian regimes is a
sensible and justifiable policy, but we must never lose sight of the deleterious effects that they do have
on their citizenry. I've noted in the past the curious fact that there are many great anti-Communist novels, but few good
ones that take on right wing dictatorship. A legion of the greatest novelists of the 20th
Century--Orwell, Koestler, Solzhenitsyn, etc.--systematically destroyed the very idea that Communist
government was compatible with human liberty, or even simple decency, but there is no similar body
of literature that delegitimizes the caudillo-style governance of Franco, Pinochet, and their kind (the
only one I know of is Rex Warner's Aerodrome). Further adding to this mystery, when we finally do
get a good novel, this one, that masterfully dissects the evils of such an authoritarian regime it comes
from Mario Vargas Llosa, who ran for President of Peru as a conservative and whose political leanings
have probably kept him from receiving the Nobel prize. Curioser and curioser... Mind you. it's a good book, not a great one. The plot device he uses to tell the story--a middle aged
woman returns to the Dominican, recalls her father's troubling career as one of Trujillo's subordinates,
and its debilitating consequences for her own life--is totally unnecessary. She just can't compete for
our attention with the much more interesting Trujillo. Also, the final section of the book that's set in
the 60s, with President Joaquin Balaguer leading the transition from Trujillo to something resembling
democracy, is a bit too smoothed out, even for someone who believes in it theoretically. It's helpful to
note that Trujillo was assassinated in 1961 and it was just four years later that LBJ had to deploy
American troops to put down a revolution. The road to being a stable, functioning democracy is not
without bumps. One final caution : it is hard not to read the book as at least an oblique criticism of
Alberto Fujimori, who defeated Mr. Vargas Llosa in the Peruvian presidential election, won great
popularity by imposing order on the terrorism torn nation, but has since had to flee to Japan as
evidence of corruption in his government has come to light. Mr. Vargas Llosa is certainly entitled to
an "I told you so" moment, and one wonders what he might have been able to achieve by attempting to
govern from the Right, but without repression. Still, Fujimori's crushing of the Shining Path guerillas
was no small feat, one that the author might have had a difficult time accomplishing without some
measure of brutality. With those mild caveats though, it is still a fine novel and it couldn't come at a more welcome time.
Latin America has hardly reached the End of History, but its future appears secure and very bright, as
a trading partner and geopolitical ally of the three NAFTA nations (the U. S., Canada, and Mexico).
The people of Central America, South America and the Caribbean deserve a full accounting for the
crimes of past leaders, but they have, more or less, reached a point where they can look ahead and
need not pick at old scabs. Now our attention turns to the Islamic world, where it seems likely that we
will want to rely on pro-Western strongmen in the Trujillo/Franco/Pinochet mold (Attaturk and the
Shah would be the Islamic models). But before we do so, it would be a good idea take a long, hard
look at the methods and practices that such regimes often employ. This book takes that look. GRADE : A-
Rating:
Summary: Superb political novel with lessons beyond the Dominican Rep
Review: The Feast of the Goat is a superb political novel. Leo Tolstoy's War and Peach; Gore Vidal's Lincoln; and Robert Grave's Claudius the God are the only three that I think are better. You can see that I hold Llosa in great esteem.
The novel is perfectly written, moving from the lives of victims of the Trujillo dictatorship, to the experiences of his fearful and terrorized courtiers, to the horror of his torture victims, to the hopeful energy and spirit of the conspirators who eventually assassinate General Trujillo, to the crafty political moves of President Joaquin Belaguer to save the nation.
General Rafael Trujillo was a primal evil force, who equated his own health with the health of the nation. His worthless brothers and sons terrorize the common people, much as the family of Sadaam Hussein did to innocent Iraqui citizens. Trujillo was as evil as Stalin, he just never had the opportuntity to kill as many folks as Stalin.
The chapters written from the perspective of Trujillo were chillingly brilliant, showing how absolute power and penetrating paranoia can be combined into a monster who destroys all those around him, including the most brillant thinkers in the nation.
The chapters written from the perspective of Trujillo's terrorized civil servants sound like the terrible experiences of the Roman aristocracy under Tiberious, Caligula and Nero. Wives are raped while their Senator husbands are in session, and all the victims keep silent because to protest would mean the deaths of the entire family.
The chapters written from the perspective of the assassins were sad beyond description. After the May 30, 1961 assassination, the Trujillo loyalists extracted a terrible bloody revenge on the families of the conspirators.
I thought the novel was exceptional in the way it described the abuse of absolute power and the crippling effect this has on those that surround the power. However, the novel goes to great heights with the description of President Joaquin Belaguer's efforts to save the nation after the reign of terror of the Trujillo family. In the same way that Talleyrand saved France after the fall of Napoleon, President Belaguer does a masterful job of moving the Dominican Republic out of bloody chaos and into the light. Both Talleyrand and Belaguer might be seen by immature or less experienced readers as Machivellian manipulators, when they in fact have the fate of the nation in their hands and their manipulations are for national stability rather than personal gain. Belaguer out maneuvers the greedy wife of the General, his daughter and two dangerous sons, his two mobster brothers, the heads of the corrupt secret police, and the US Ambassador. Like Vidal's Lincoln, power is seen from multiple perspectives - all of which rang true.
Rating:
Summary: A feast for the mind
Review: This is a highly personal book for me: I am half Dominican and a relative of one of the minor characters portrayed in the book, and I grew up hearing first-hand stories about the Trujillo regime. Additionally, I have been an avid reader of Vargas Llosa's books for several years starting during a span of several years when I lived in Peru, the author's home country. Because of that, I put off reading the book for several months, fearing that it might not live up to the possibly unreasonable expectations I had built up. But those fears melted away within a few pages of starting the book, with the compelling story of Urania, the protagonist in one of the three major story lines that fill the pages of the novel. In retrospect, the story of Urania seems to be the weakest of the three lines (it is also the only one that is mostly fiction, though it can be seen as a amalgam of several real events with some artistic license thrown in), but that is more a statement about the strength of the story about the dictator's eventual murderers and (most notably) the one about Trujillo than it is a weakness about Urania's tale. The story is gritty and intense, riveting and important -- an examination into a 31-year dictatorship that much of the world is unaware of, as well as a fascinating probe into the minds of people who lived under extraordinary circumstances. Without a doubt, The Feast of the Goat will solidify Vargas Llosa's place among Latin America's literary giants like Garcia Marquez, Neruda, Borges, Paz and Allende.
Rating:
Summary: You can never go home!
Review: This is a shockingly vivid tale of the demise of the dictator of the Dominican Republic, Raphael Trujillo. It is a complex story of trust & betrayal of a country & its people. A woman, born in the Dominican Republic, returns after an absence of more than 30 years, attempting to face what drove her away as a young girl. The years of repressive dictatorship are relived with her return. THE FEAST OF THE GOAT gives us an expanded view of what many countries of Central & South America have suffered at the hands of cruel & greedy dictators, & their long road toward democracy. A riveting, thought-provoking book.
Rating:
Summary: Another masterpiece from one of my favorite authors
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent; Vargas Lllosa's Best Book in Years
Review: This is an excellent historical novel by this very talented writer. The center of the book is the ambush and execution of the Dominican dicatator, Trujillo, in 1961. Around this event Vargas Llosa constructs a superb reconstruction of life under Trujillo. The book has three narrative strands. The first is the story of a Dominican emigre returning to her homeland many years after Trujillo's death and confronting her past, The second is the last days of Trujillo himself, and the third is the story of Trujillo's killers. The last two strands merge after Trujillo's death. The sum of these strands is a brilliantly rendered and devastating analysis of life under Trujillo. The latter ruled with a combination of ruthless brutality and skilful patronage. Trujillo's rapacious family exploited the state for their own ends. The account of the aftermath of Trujillo's death with the search for, torture of, and execution of the killers is horrifying. The least successful part of the book is the story of the emigre woman; this plot seems almost cliche and the writing in this section is not as gripping as the other plot strands. Despite this flaw, this is a very successful novel. Vargas Llosa clearly aimed at a devastating indictment of dictatorial rule and achieves this end brilliantly.
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