*Starred Review* The Peruvian Nobel laureate is an aggressive yet elegant writer, unafraid of confronting big social and political issues and complex historical figures and corralling these potent forces into wide-screen novels that never fail to leave readers slammed against the wall in awe and admiration. In his new novel, he has taken from the pages of history a quiet, sober, reflective Irishman in the British diplomatic service. But through his great humanitarian work, Roger Casement spoke loudly about colonial abuse of native peoples in the Congo and Peru, for which he was knighted by the British king in 1911. Startlingly, five years later, he was executed for treason by the same king's government. This seeming disparity, the transition from hero to criminal, is the great drama of Casement's life, rendered by Vargas Llosa with a wondrous mixture of factual accuracy and responsible imagining. Casement's evolution from believing in the colonial system to abhorring it, and then carrying over his newfound and profound hatred of oppression to an intense and ultimately fatal bid to wrest Ireland's home rule from Britain, is a trajectory the author follows with a dynamic richness of detail that leaves the novel a sublime example of historical fiction of the highest order and of literature in its maximum effectiveness. High-Demand Back Story: Prepub buzz announces this as one of the South American master's finest efforts, and literary fiction readers will want to read and discuss.--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2010 Booklist

Starred Review. The Nobel Prize laureate turns to the early 20th-century Irish rebel Roger Casement's insurrection and execution in a saga typical of the author's renowned storytelling style. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A Nobel Prize for Literature winner (in 2010) and one-time Peruvian presidential candidate, Vargas Llosa chronicles the life of Roger Casement, an Irish patriot and human rights activist, or "specialist in atrocities," who was executed by the British in 1916 after the Easter Rising, which heralded the beginning of Irish independence. This is a meticulously researched book about a deeply complex man; Vargas Llosa's admirable powers as a writer of fiction are apparent when he slows the pace of the narrative to allow access to Casement's thoughts as he languishes in prison, waiting to hear whether his stay of execution has been granted. Vargas Llosa (The Bad Girl) is at his best writing as a novelist rather than biographer, but the unnecessarily complex narrative structure in which Casement's life story unfolds at a galloping pace achieves neither the best of biography nor the best of fiction. Readers will wish that the book was either one or the other. Agent: The Carmen Balcells Agency. (June 12) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.