The Feast of the Goat is a fascinating story of the assassination of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, also know as The Goat.
Mario Vargas Llosa employs the literary cliché in this novel of having a character, Urania Cabral, return to her childhood home in the former Dominican capital, where she proceeds to detail the history of the city through flashbacks.
The story of Trujillo and his ultimate demise at the hands of men who were his loyal followers and appointed officials is an engaging one that has many parallels to the political intrigue surrounding other dictators. Details of some of the tortures devised by Trujillo's enforcers, led by the sadistic Johnny Abbes, are gruesome and may shock readers with weaker constitutions.
The back story of Urania Cabral seems a bit too convenient and contrived as a literary device, rather than a support for the story. Llosa has a very captivating history here, and didn't really need to bring in the predictable subplot of Urania, whose father worked in the Trujillo government and would do "anything" to keep in the dictator's favor.
Despite Llosa's contrived structure for the story of the Dominican Republic's sordid history, The Feast of the Goat is a very engrossing read, and I found it a good introduction to a subject I did not know much about. Any story where the bastard get his due and the heroes ultimately triumph is worth reading.
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