The Feast of the Goat

Michael Finocchiaro

Rating: really liked it
The Irish Independant did not exaggerate on the back cover when they say this book "makes for page-turning reading that entertains, educates, and horrifies in almost equal parts." The story of the Trujillo regime and the chaos surrounding his assassination is told by Urania, daughter of one of his intimates who was disgraced shortly before the fatal evening, the Generalissimo himself (with his failing prostate), and several of the conspirators as they wait on a lonely road for his Chevy to appear to ambush him. I found the writing incredible, the pace breathtaking, and the violence absolutely terrifying. Having read (and reviewed here on GR) Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz earlier this year, I knew sort of what to expect, but this book surprised me at nearly every turn. It is no wonder that Mario Vargas Llosa got a Nobel. This is a work of pure genius and one that will be nearly impossible to forget. I really liked the protagonist Urania and how her arc in constructed. The failure of the US to act in the Caribbean to prevent atrocities like the 30 years of Trujillo and the brutal aftermath that followed the vacuum he left behind because of anti-Castro politics is appalling and made me feel ashamed. This also reminded me of my favorite read this year, A Brief History of Seven Killings where the CIA actively supported the violence in Jamaica again because of paranoia about Cuba and the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation. The massacre (genocidal in every way) is as chilling in Vargas Llosa as it was in Diaz's book. Makes me wonder if anyone wrote a book about the Haitian side of a that story and of the excesses of the Duvaliers and their terrifying TonTon Macoute (who made a small, brutal appearance in Goat). I was in Haïti for two weeks in 1985 and the memories of the misery on every corner, the smell of burning charcoal, the calls of the Cooligan Man, and the hidden terror of the TonTon Macoute still occasionally return in my nightmares.

The narration of the book is perfect - always a section with Urania, followed by one of Trujillo and his circle (plus his Quo Vadis obsession) and one of the conspiracy to assassinate him. It makes for fast-paced and exciting reading.

Highly, highly recommended reading.

Fino's Mario Vargas Llosa Reviews:
Fiction
The Cubs and Other Stories (1959) TBR
The Time of the Hero (1963)
The Green House (1966)
Conversation in the Cathedral (1969)
Captain Pantoja and the Special Services (1973)
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977)
The War of the End of the World (1981)
The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (1985)
Who Killed Palomino Molero? (1987)
The Storyteller (1989)
In Praise of the Stepmother (1990)
Death in the Andes (1996)
The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (1998)
The Feast of the Goat (2001)
The Way to Paradise (2003)
The Bad Girl (2007)
The Dream of the Celt (2010)
The Discrete Hero (2015)
The Neighborhood (2018)
Harsh Times (2021) TBR

Non-Fiction
The Perpetual Orgy (1975)
A Fish Out of Water (1993)
Letters to a Young Novelist (1998)

Ahmad Sharabiani

Rating: really liked it
La Fiesta del Chivo = The Feast of The Goat, Mario Vargos Llosa

The Feast of the Goat is a novel by the Peruvian Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa.

The book is set in the Dominican Republic and portrays the assassination of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, and its aftermath, from two distinct standpoints a generation apart: during and immediately after the assassination itself, in May 1961; and thirty-five years later, in 1996.

Throughout, there is also extensive reflection on the heyday of the dictatorship, in the 1950's, and its significance for the island and its inhabitants.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «سور بز»؛ «جشن بز نر»؛ نویسنده: ماریو وارگاس لیوسا؛ ادبیات آمریکای لاتین؛ انتشارتیها: (نشر علم، نشر قطره)؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز بیست و ششم ماه آوریل سال 2002میلادی

عنوان: سور بز؛ نویسنده: ماریو بارگاس یوسا؛ مترجم: عبدالله کوثری؛ مشخصات نشر تهران، نشر علم؛ 1381؛ در 623ص، شابک ایکس 964405203؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان پرو - سده 20م

عنوان: جشن بز نر؛ نویسنده: ماریو بارگاس یوسا؛ مترجم: جاهد جهانشاهی؛ مشخصات نشر: تهران، نشر قطره؛ 1381؛ در 586ص، شابک 9643411745؛

سور بز، به نقشه ی قتل دیکتاتور نظامی جمهوری «دومینیکن»، «رافائل تروخیو»، و ماجراهای پس از آن می‌پردازد؛ اما «سور بز» تنها به رخداد کشته شدن «تروخیو» نمیپردازد، بلکه «یوسا» در این رمان، با راوی قرار دادن «اورانیا»، دختر سناتور «آگوستین کابرال» وزیر امور خارجه، سناتور و رهبر حزب «دومینیکن»، به میان شخصیت‌های مهم کشوری و لشگری رژیم «تروخیو»، می‌رود، و در خلال روایت داستان جا به‌ جا به توصیف جزء به جزء شخصیت و منش دیکتاتور می‌پردازد

این رویداد گاه از راه تک‌ گویی‌های انتقامی «اورانیا»، رو به پدرش سناتور «آگوستین کابرال»، که حالا دیگر ناتوان از سخن گفتن، و حرکت شده، بیان، و گاهی نویسنده، با بهره گرفتن از مستندات «تاریخی»، و «واقعی»، و درآمیختن آن‌ها با خیال، از «زد و بند رئیس»، با کارگزارانش، «روابط او با متحدانش»، در «ایالات متحده آمریکا»، «درگیری‌هایش با رهبران کشورهای همسایه»؛ مثل «کوبا» و «ونزوئلا»؛ و دسیسه‌ چینی‌های او و اطرافیانش، برای کله پا کردن منتقدان و دشمنان رژیم؛ پرده برمی‌دارد؛ و در این بین از هر فرصتی برای آشنا کردن خوانشگر با سرشت و ذات دیکتاتور خونسرد سود می‌برد

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 07/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 15/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Jim Fonseca

Rating: really liked it
[Edited and pictures added 3/22/22]

A political and historical novel about Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930-1961. This novel is a factually correct version of the events focused around his assassination in 1961 when Trujillo was 70 years old.



We see the life of this man who loved his country and was politically brilliant, hard-working and fastidious. He was also a brutal and sadistic man. He sent his cronies on overseas missions so he could visit their wives who could dare not refuse his attentions. Trujillo was charismatic with a piercing gaze and high-pitched voice --- does that remind us of another brutal dictator in Europe?

The author lets us see the story from multiple perspectives – Trujillo’s own perspective on a daily basis; that of his inner circle of cronies who ran the country, and from the perspectives of the half-dozen or so assassins as they lie in wait. They reminisce on their personal stories about what led them to want to kill this man, nicknamed “The Goat.”

But much of the story is that of a 50-ish Dominican woman, daughter of one of those in the dictator’s inner circle, who returns to the Dominican Republic on the spur of the moment. Working as a lawyer in New York, she has been absent from her home country for 35 years. She returns to confront her dying father and aging relatives and to reveal a horrible secret to them that explains her 35-year absence.

Bookforum called this one of the best political novels ever written and I agree. It has an exceptionally high rating on GR – 4.3 with more than 30,000 ratings. Well worth a ‘5’ and I added it to my favorites.



Photo of the car in which Trujillo was assassinated from thoughtco.com
The author from the guardian.com

Fabian

Rating: really liked it
One. Flawless. Masterpiece! Bona fide.

As a reader you cannot ask for more. This dense and complex novel about the Trujillo Era in the D.R., like the best novels, from "Gone with the Wind" to "The Human Stain," explains not only the steps leading to a total devastation, but, braver still, its equally about the eventual aftermath. "The Feast of the Goat" is unputdownable, remarkable. A sturdy and sure classic. Read THIS!

Not much more can be said, without sounding as though I am somehow WORTHY of even critiquing this!!

Jenn(ifer)

Rating: really liked it
Render unto God what is God’s and unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.

But what if Caesar thought he was God? Well then, I guess he’d want it all.

And so goes the story of Rafael Trujillo, power hungry dictator of the Dominican Republic for a period of thirty years until his brutal assassination in 1961. ‘Feast of the Goat’ tells the story of Trujillo’s reign using a blend of fact and fiction, centered on the fateful day that would end an era. Varied narratives blend together seemlessly to give us a portrait of three decades of corruption, violence and terror.

Chapters switch between the present day, when Urania Cabral returns to the Dominican Republic after thirty years of exile to visit her dying father who had at one time been one of Trujillo’s most trusted allies. Sitting at her father’s deathbed, she remembers the horror of Trujillo’s rule. In alternating chapters, the story is told through memories of the men who banded together to take down The Goat, as well as through the voice of The Goat himself on the day of his assassination.

Vargas Llosa also allows the reader to peek into the mind of the Generalissimo himself. Through the inner thoughts of Trujillo, now seventy years old, incontinent, impotent, yet still revered and feared, we learn how devious and evil the man truly was.

Captivating, intense and gruesome, this novel will keep your attention throughout and haunt you long after you've finished its final pages.

Settare (on hiatus)

Rating: really liked it
Excruciatingly bitter, agonizingly poignant in its prose and plot and message, painful to read, absolutely brilliant. The Feast of the Goat is, without a doubt, one of the best books I have ever read.

Aside from the brilliant writing, prose, and storytelling merits, this book is important because it educates us on the abhorrent essence of tyranny and dictatorial regimes. The unsettling truth about 'unimportant' countries battling with tyrannical rulers is that people are isolated and no one from the outside world cares. When a few decades pass, no one even remembers the struggle of the inhabitants of the said country. Usually, there's little to no spotlight for people who are suffering like that, that's why I think it's admirable, important, and even effective for writers as prolific as Llosa to write about those people and their suffering in fiction. Because fiction has the power to move and to educate and to preserve history. What happened to the people of the Dominican Republic during the rule of Trujillo is a gruesome part of history, which is constantly being repeated in similar patterns in other countries, and if we are to not fall for aspiring new dictators or get rid of the ones that already inhibit many countries, we should read. And The Feast of the Goat is a superb example of the kind of books we could, and should, read.

Chris_P

Rating: really liked it
One thing I learned from The Feast of the Goat is that short memory is a universal characteristic of people of all times. Dictators turn from tyrants to saviors in no time and villains become heroes when the new political situation demands it. People simply accept the regimes like they accept the changes of the weather, with the only difference being the fact that, many times, they're under the illusion that they had the choice. Which I guess they had but not in the way they think they had it. Disillusionment is a bitch and has to be avoided, as it seems.

Another thing I learned is that in order to finally beat a dictator, you have to have him stand naked in front of the crowd. However, to be able to do such a thing, first you have to see him naked yourself, which means you have to see all of him. Accusing is easy. Seeing and understanding every side of a detestable person is what is hard and that's exactly what Llosa does here.

I felt uncomfortable when I saw Trujillo standing naked in front of me. I felt uncomfortable when I felt sorry for him. I felt uncomfortable when I disliked the victim for being a victim her whole life and I felt uncomfortable when an ocean of excuses finally ran dry. What it always comes down to is personal responsibility and that's where the majority of people seem to fail, and no dictator, no matter how bad, can take the blame for that.

Five stars. Simple as that.

William2

Rating: really liked it
Mr Llosa can write. I won't dispute that. But this is not a good novel for me for the following reasons. (1) The author has bitten off far more than he can chew in a mere 400 pages. The scope of the book is vast and too much feels rushed. He might have narrowed his scope, but alas he wants it all. Because of the enormous narrative breadth, this reader never got the level of satisfaction in the area of character development that he would have liked; there are so many characters and after a while they all seem to blur. (2) There is a rushed, headlong quality to the book, probably this is intentional but I do not like it. (3) I find the levels of Catholic motivation to be too much; probably for a Latin American reader these levels are just right. For these and other reasons I did not finish the book and give it two stars.

The book breaks into three stories: (1) that of Urania Cabral, set in the present day, when she returns to a now democratized Dominican Republic years after Trujillo's assassination to confront (torment) her father who was a "senator" (read crony) under the Benefactor; (2) that of Trujillo himself in the weeks before his assassination; and (3) that of the group of men, mostly young men, who will kill him.

The story Urania tells to her incapacitated father, who is now in a wheelchair, is most unsettling. Urania is visiting from New York City where she now lives. She has done extensive reading on the subject, now knows much about those dark mysterious years of her youth. For example, how Trujillo, habitually cuckolded his ministers. Urania spares her mute father none of it. She is so cruel.

Dictator Trujillo is a megalomaniac on the model of Stalin. He terrorized his own people for 31 years. In October 1937 he ordered the slaughter of about 20,000 Haitians in what came to be known as the Parsley Massacre. Typically, the US backed him as a bulwark against Communism. (Now where have we seen that pattern before? Chile, Iran, Vietnam, Cuba, and Korea spring to mind, to mention a few.)

Trujillo's a compulsive neat freak who seeks through personal cleanliness and punctilio a semblance of the moral standing he can never command. We first come across him undergoing his daily toilette with great care. Trujillo's story begins in 1961 some 16 months after a Pastoral Letter has been sent by the Vatican to the Catholic community in the Dominican Republic. Since then the Church has, Trujillo feels, harassed him from the pulpit for his flagrant human rights violations and turned the people against him. The two Catholic leaders responsible for this he imagines feeding alive to sharks, as he has so many other opponents.

The assassins's storyline is set on May 30, 1961, as they await the Generalissimo's car on a stretch of road. There are 4 of them in the car and as they wait there are flashbacks outlining the motivations of each. This is tedious.

In some ways The Feast of the Goat is a counterpart novel to Graham Greene's The Comedians. That excellent book--set in Haiti on the other side of Hispaniola in the 1960s when the corrupt Duvaliers were in power--is a model of narrative pacing and economy.

Luís

Rating: really liked it
Four men will end three decades of the dictatorship of the Generalissimo of the Dominican Republic. Thirty-five years later, a woman came from America to call Augustín Cabral, his father, who became bedridden, a former associate to the Supreme Head.
Despite his physical decline, the one who will fall under the bullets of his former victims, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, still keeps his entourage and the country. He and his family have a great deal of wealth, a country still living in fear of arbitrary arrests, torture and summary executions. At the time of his death, the one who stole the childhood of Augustin Cabral's daughter is not afraid. It convinced him that he made the greatness of Santo Domingo.

Em Lost In Books

Rating: really liked it
This book tells us the story of Rafael Trujillo, who ruled Dominican Republic for 30 years. It tells us about the rise and fall of the man was brutal, power hungry, cruel, and would stop at nothing to remain in power. He was assassinated in 1961.

Story is told by Rafael himself; Urania, daughter of very influential political figure, and the assassins. Author has merged all these PoV beautifully. With a right mix of reality and fiction we get to see the insecurities that Trujillo felt in his last few days, Urania telling us how unsafe girls were in Trujillo regime, and last but certainly not least how the assassins (few of whom were devout Trujilloists initially) made up their mind to kill the man who was no less than a God in the country and what happened to them after the assassination.

Author has told us in explicit details about the torture that the assassins went through once they were caught. It was very repulsive and gut wrenching. I had to take few days off just to digest what I had read before coming back to it.

This book is a prime example of how dirty politics can be. Murder, rape, crime against minorities, fathers whoring out their own daughters to climb up the political ladders or just so that they can be in good graces of General. It is full of sadistic people who get a satisfaction by hurting others.

Gabrielle

Rating: really liked it
Uh. Ok. Wow.

This is my first novel by Mario Vargas Llosa, and well, I am a little lost for words here. I cracked open “The Feast of the Goat” relatively ignorant about its subject matter. I knew that the Trujillo regime had been a brutal dictatorship that had kept the Dominican Republic in a state of terror for many years but that was about it, really. Consider my ignorance remedied now, as I constantly looked up events and people featured in Vargas Llosa’s novel.

“The Feast of the Goat” is a beautifully, intricately written work of historical fiction that explores these thirty years of Dominican history through the eyes of Urania Cabral, the daughter of one of Trujillo’s disgraced (and fictional) senators, and through the story of the conspirators who took part in the plot to assassinate the Generalissimo. After thirty years abroad, Uriana comes back to visit her now-incapacitated father, and her return to the Dominican Republic brings up memories of growing up in a strange time and place. Uriana struggles with reconciling what she perceives as contrasting facets of her father’s personality, knowing fully well that for many years, he sheltered her from the horrible things that happened to other women (wives or daughters) who were close to the Trujillo family, and yet worked to keep people he knew were capable of monstrous acts in power – often by being complicit to many atrocities himself. Intertwined with her recollections are the stories of a handful of men who made the decision to put an end to El Hefe’s rule in the only effective way they could think of, and what strange and often violent pasts brought them to this point. In a third story line, some events are seen from the perspective of Trujillo himself, as he looks back on some of the most infamous moments of his dictatorship while coming to grips with his failing health and the unavoidable end of his reign.

The non-linear narrative, which brings together the present moment and vivid memories is seamless, the prose both gorgeous and heartbreaking. As mentioned, I knew very little about the history of the Dominican Republic, and this eye-opening narrative brought that history to life in a deeply affective and personal way. The multiple points of view give a very rich and layered portrait of what it was like to live in what was then Ciudad Trujillo, and how the aftermath of the assassination upended the characters’ world. Vargas Llosa describes the brutal corruption and acts of great violence very graphically – but do not for a minute think that this is done gratuitously. He shows the horrible power of blackmail and manipulation, the way power itself is given and taken away in such a cruel and decadent setting to warn readers of the dangers of absolute power and misplaced loyalties.

Using Trujillo’s voice for one story line was also a clever move on Vargas Llosa’s part, because while the other two narrations serve as a testimonial that some things should never be forgotten lest history repeats itself, we also need to remember that despots and narrators often think of themselves as saviors and well-intentioned people. It’s not easy to summon empathy for Trujillo, but we see here a terrible dictator who is, also, a bitterly disappointed parent, an insecure old man who can feel his death hot on his heels and someone who let his thirst for power and control override his capacity to be empathic. I’m not sure I felt sad for Rafael Trujillo, but I felt sad for the pathetic old man on the page.

This novel is unusually gripping for historical fiction, as the events escalate into a shocking climax that brings all three narrative lines together. I saw that another reviewer was reminded of Roth’s “Human Stain” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) while reading this, because it is just as intimate, perhaps strangely, as the story of Coleman Silk, and similarly engineered into a beautiful clockwork that delivers a devastating bang at the end. Stunning is really the best word I can think of to describe this book. Everyone should read it.

AC

Rating: really liked it
This magnificent little book is page-turner. It is a plot driven work that analyzes the rule and the assassination (and the consequences thereof) of Rafael Trujillo, the dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930-1961. The book has an unlikely hero (to reveal the name here would constitute a ‘spoiler’) and, obviously, an anti-hero (Trujillo himself).

But the book is more than mere plot, for the plot functions as a vehicle for the analysis of a host of highly individuated characters – characters of great depth and intensity of feeling and of existential weight.

(Contrast Aristotle’s Poetics, for whom character [ethos – which refers to character TYPES, stock characters, not individuals in the modern sense] is a vehicle for the unfolding of plot [mythos]. In this very classic sense, Vargas Illosa’s work is ‘classically’ modern.)

But these characters are not there simply to function as pools of feeling or of self-absorption or of narcissism and the like – as is so often the case with modern literature. For the characters in this work function quite explicitly as a vehicle for the analysis and anatomy of the modern pathologies of fascism and of authoritarian societies. There is thus a social or historical dimension that is fundamental.

But in studying this historical dimension, Vargas Illosa makes it clear (to my mind, at least) that he is not simply interested in contingent realities, but that he is trying to bring forth something fundamental about modern man as such – and so, something fundamental about the human dilemma in ITS fundaments.

A magnificent book.

There is, however, readers should be warned, very little in the way of ‘lexis’ – that is, no fireworks of style or language -- which some readers may bemoan, but which all too often is but a camouflage for the absence of meaning. At any rate, that is not Vargas Illosa’s concern in The Feast of the Goat.

Praj

Rating: really liked it
I find the expression “benevolent dictator” quite acerbic; paradoxical in fact. The exclusive benefactor of populous land; a leader who promises to the countrymen a utopia (Thomas Moore’s unicorn), stands on the world pedestal portraying duplicitous cultural patriotism while butchering every free voice that fails to meet his egotistical standards and motives. Questions stumble upon patriotic validities. Who do we call a true loyalist of a country? The leader who cogently assumes the role of a saviour bestowing atrocities on his own people or those anonymous victims who take a powerful stand to fight against the authoritative rule?

The Feast of the Goat makes you sit up and take notice of a fascinating Dominican Republic and its people rising up from an authoritative rule and numerous domestic strives that spanned over a large period in the 20th century. Llosa intertwines three tales forming a purposeful camaraderie between reality and literature encompassing the treacherous dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina ruling over three decades and the aftermath of Trujillo’s assassination. After 35 years, Urania Cabral hesitantly comes back to her home in Santa Domingo to visit her ailing father. Agustin Cabral once a highly influential part of Trujillo’s inner circle, is now reduced to a vegetative state aching to seek Urania’s forgiveness for a crime he committed decades ago. The novel lifts off from splendid fiction into the factual reign of Trujillo and the following assassination. Llosa gives a terrifying look into the sinister inner circle of Trujillo exposing brutal crimes of rape, embezzlements and the horrendous murder of the Mirabal Sisters, committed by him and his son(Ramfis Trujillo).On May 30, 1961, Trujillo was shot on Avenida George Washington in Santo Domingo on his way to visit one of his several underage girls ,plotted by Modesto Diaz, Salvador Estrella Sadhalá, Antonio de la Maza, Amado García Guerrero along with a team of men from Trujillo’s ministry. The tone of the plot is mysterious penetrating the psyche of those groups of heroic men and thousands of Dominican people who suffered and lived in utmost terror for a major part of a generation.

It is exasperating how the international media springs through popular news whilst overlooking the histories of various nations victimized from treachery and charades of nationalistic sovereignty. Heroic sacrifices are forgotten and Angelita Trujillo has the nerve to write a book about her father proclaiming him to be a “admirable, a dedicated fighter and a triumphant man”.

Edward

Rating: really liked it
I had such high expectations for Vargas Llosa, but I'm left feeling underwhelmed. While I enjoyed both The Feast of the Goat and The War of the End of the World, neither was exceptional. His prose is competent, but not particularly inspired. In this novel, I felt the story was both overwritten and under-explored. His formula for introducing and describing characters felt repetitive and heavy-handed, and failed to create memorable, substantial characters. Many seemed almost generic, driven only by a single goal or ideal, or characterised by an ironic twist. They were simplistic, lacking the multi-dimensionality of real people.

The history of the period is quite fascinating, and sustains the novel though its tedious parts - indeed some sections were legitimately gripping. But there was too much dialogue, too much exposition, too much effort spent attempting to breathe life into flat, indistinguishable characters for the novel to maintain a consistent pace.

Pedro

Rating: really liked it
All I want to say is for you to skip this soulless boring crap but then if I look at all the five star reviews on here, and think about the fact that I’m supposed to act like a mature middle aged and privileged white guy… Oops… Ahem… Sorry, I forgot that I have never been a privileged guy and, based on the various tones of colour of my body, I’m not even sure about how white I’m considered to be. Well, at least the part about me being a middle age guy is, for better or for worse, and without a doubt, a fact.

And it’s exactly because I’m a very mature middle aged person that I (now) know that I can’t just show up on here throwing people’s favourite books under the bus only because I found them to be poorly written.

Who am I, anyway, to accuse a Nobel laureate author of writing one of the most boring books I have ever read? Who do I think I am to state that I believe the author wrote it from a loveless place?

I guess I’m someone who pays for his own books and has a right to say whatever he thinks. That’s who I am.

And I’m also someone who needs characters to be developed in order to feel for them.
No matter what an author decides to do to his characters, I’m not going to give a damn about them unless he manages to make them jump out of the pages. And that definitely didn’t happen here. Characters were raped, tortured and killed (which are all awful things) but I didn’t care.

I didn’t care about Urania, the main character, because she sounded like a puppet that the author only used to bitterly shout about his views to the world.

I didn’t care about Trujillo (aka the Goat, the Chief, Generalissimo, Excellency, Benefactor and/or the Beast) because he, like all the ones who conspired to kill him, were nothing but names and/or nicknames on a page.

I don’t know why I tortured myself to finish something I realised early on was basically a dull and one sided retelling of some real life events.

I could (can) pinpoint lots of other flaws (like the confusing way in which the whole thing was told) in what is, according to the The New York Times, for example, “A fierce, edgy and enthralling book”, but I better stop here.

I really don’t want to be the one throwing other people’s favourite masterpieces under the bus (I know I said that already!).

And besides I’m now a mature middle age guy who always get very hurt whenever he sees his favourite masterpieces being torn to shreds by others.

Oh, the translation was top notch though. One star for it.