THE DREAM OF THE CELT

by Mario Vargas Llosa

I enjoyed Vargas Llosa's last novel, The Bad Girl. There were great passages describing the main character growing up in Lima, and then as a young man in Paris during the 1960s (it felt like a French New Wave film adapted into a book, and, in certain parts, The Last Tango in Paris too). Vargas Llosa's earlier novels are more highly esteemed, but I remember becoming interested in Vargas Llosa after reading a review by Kathryn Harrison in which she compares The Bad Girl to Madame Bovary. But now he has a new book that I've requested from the library, the fictionalized story of Roger Casement. Edith Grossman, who did the The Bad Girl, as well as a fine version of Don Quixote, is the translator. Oh! Between writing The Bad Girl and The Dream of the Celt, Vargas Llosa won some award called the Nobel Prize for Literature.