This novel is one of the most famous plays by the Peruvian novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa, who was awarded with the Nobel Prize of Literature in 2010.

The feast of The Goat (La fiesta del Chivo) shows the different stories surrounding  the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (also known as The Goat) in the Dominican Republic.  The novel follows three different storylines. One is the return of Urania Cabral to Santo Domingo to visit her ill father and the memories of her and her family relationship with the dictator, the other one concerns the last day of Trujillo, and the third story focusses on the assassination of Trujillo and the prosecution of the conspirators.

This novel shows the spiral of a regime that ruled the Dominican Republic during more than 30 years and the inner circle where all the characters were involved in one way or another. The different stories are alternated and the novel goes back and forth from 1961 to 1996 and is full of flashbacks to the period of Trujillo’s regime where the reader gets immersed in the horror of one of the bloodiest period of the history.

This book is definitely  a must for all those who would like to know more about the history of Latin America at the same time than enjoy a fantastic piece of literature whose author has been awarded by the Swedish Academy as one of the best authors of all times and translated to more than 10 languages.

Andrea

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