Do You like book Death In The Andes (1996)?
Awesome book. Mario Vargas Llosa blends folk tales with a love story behind the political screen of Shining Path terrorism. How did he do it? The love story (and its a great love story) emerges from the young guard Tomas who tells Corporal Lituma as he has investigates three mysterious disappearances of local people including the mute young man he befriended. Constantly threatening them is the terror of the Shining Path guerrillas who threaten to kill everything and everyone in their path. To add to the atmosphere is the cantina owner Dionysio and his witch wife Senora Adriana. Borrowing heavily from the Greek myth, Dionysio lives up to his namesake while his wife weaves mysterious tales to the story.Lituma begins to believe the stories of natives of the pishtacos and huaycos and things that scare the men of Nacco, a remote mining outpost. And the stories intertwine and weave amongst themselves but the reader is never lost. Quite amazing at times and the tension is constant broken by the love story.Like Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter and The Bad Girl, I couldn't put this book down as the story was so wonderfully told. READ!
—David
This is not only the first book by Mario Vargas Llosa I have ever read, it is also, to the extent that I can recall, the first book about Peru I have ever read. Up to now my reading in Spanish American literature has been limited to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda, an author whose bona fides I suspect because, after all, he only has two names.I enjoyed the book, enjoyed reading it, followed it easily, saw how the minor episodes and activities and characters built the structure. Still, it never grabbed me the way The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao or Love in the Time of Cholera grabbed me.There is no reason to blame Vargas Llosa for that. It may just as easily be my fault. Next I think I shall try In Praise of the Stepmother. That may change what I think even of this book.
—Chuck Lowry
I am ashamed to admit that I only recently (in my early 30s) "discovered" Vargas Llosa, and only read my first work by him in April (2013). My choice of "Death in the Andes" was twofold: first, I had been on a "mystery" binge for at least a year, devouring daily Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Jo Nesbo, Baldacci & the like, and was ready to move on to more substantial, less mind-numbing (written for entertainment value primarily) work--"Death in the Andes" seemed like a perfect transition, a more literary mystery by a Nobel laureate (it ended up not being much of the latter). Second, I had just within the past year visited South America for the first time, hiking the Inca trail and falling in love with the people and culture of Peru in a more intense and passionate way than I ever have with a locale previously during my travels--the fact that Vargas Llosa is Peruvian and that this novel takes place in the most beautiful, mysterious, tranquil and surreal setting I have ever experienced clinched the decision to try and move beyond my current phase of shallow feel-good mysteries.By most accounts, this is not Vargas Llosa's best work, and by others, "Death in the Andes" is a meandering "mystery" that doesn't quite live up to any mystery standards. I agree wholeheartedly with both appraisals: the first, because I am not trudging through "The War of the End of the World," an epic fictionalized account of the Brazilian fanatical/rebel settlement Canudos (during the latter part of the 19th century), and, although I am not even halfway through, I consider this to be the most brilliant work of fiction I have ever read, and the competition has been fierce (previously I was enamored with Sartre's "Age of Reason" trilogy, all of Camus & most of Atwood, Vonnegut, Irving, Heller, and the like: we're not talking of a comparison between Vargas Llosa and Christie or Baldacci, but of one with serious heavyweights). Regarding the second point, "Death in the Andes" is not a mystery; it's full of mystery, but is not in any way, shape, or form, a detective or mystery novel in which the three disappearances which center the novel are systematically solved. Rather, it is a lyrical, incredibly written drama which offers profound insights into the nature of human experience, a beautiful description of native life in the Andes of Peru, a surreal atmosphere in which the horrific is rendered mundane while the prosaic is transposed into the realm of mystery, and a tragic illustration of the mechanics of terror, superstition, and power--an incredible induction into Latin American "magical realism". On the surface, "Death in the Andes" is a story about two guards/officers sent to a remote outpost in the Andes to protect the workers in a small mining town in an extremely dangerous region which the Shining Path (communist guerrillas of Peru) rules through massacres, rapes, plunder, and other terrorist acts. The story begins after the third disappearance of a miner, as the guards are seeking answers to the possible fates of the missing men (Were they killed by the Shining Path? Did they run off to join this group? Were acts of nature involved? Or were the men "sacrificed"--willingly or not--to the spirits of the mountains, to appease them for the tumultuous changes ravaging local communities?). As much as the disappearances play a role in the broader illustrations of how individuals make meaning within a chaotic, senseless world in which they are manipulated by forces which they feel helpless to shape (such as terrorism), the mystery, and the "solving" of possible crimes, is besides the point. Instead, Vargas Llosa paints a complex world in which even when known as fact, the "solution" of the disappearances remains ambiguous, unintelligible, mysterious, in which any clear lines between "good" and its opposite have been effectively blurred beyond recognition, and in which we are left to question how we can possibly identify and empathize with those who practice acts which, if written as catchy bylines, would terrify us (such as "Human Sacrifice in the Andes").If it's not already clear why I absolutely loved this book so much that the next day I bought five more Vargas Llosa books and almost immediately started reading "The War of the End of the World," suffice to say that there is only one reason, and it's more than one hundred others together: Vargas Llosa's brilliant aesthetic and incredible ability to poignantly depict the ambiguous and complex nature of humanity. I haven't been this glued to every word, nuance, and detail in a book for many, many years. Usually I read fast, trying to devour as many books as possible in the limited time I have to read in a week, but with "Death in the Andes," I was savoring every word, looking up references online, visualizing the setting and characters, in general just taking my time to enjoy the beautiful writing and surreal (to a Westerner) story... I can only imagine how beautiful this novel is in Spanish: Vargas Llosa has inspired me to get going on my Spanish learning (I've been meaning to for a while) so I can read this powerful novel in its original language.The only aspect of this novel that was surprising/not as satisfying was the ending... for such a tragic work (about the emotional terror of living in a setting in which one may be prayed on at any time by nationalist terrorist group The Shining Path, and about the superstitious religious beliefs of local communities, including human sacrifice), the ending was surprisingly happy. Everything worked out too perfectly for both protagonists, they both got what they wanted: one got the girl, the other won relocation to a safer community... This was quite uplifting, considering the rest of the novel, but I also felt like the ending detracted from the roller coaster emotional ride and tragic nature that constituted 99% of the work. I kept waiting for the same fate to befall the two Guards as the other "missing" characters...Still, brilliant atmospheric writing, and a 5+++ in my book. I am looking forward to a Vargas Llosa binge for the next few months, or however long it takes me to get through the rest of his novels :) I am in love!!!!
—Ioana
