“I don’t like heroes”, says Mr. Stirs, the English Consul at Iquitos, in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, to Roger Casement, the tortured hero of Irish nationalism, & he might as well have added that the world doesn’t like them either.Mario Vargas Llosa’s novelization of Sir Roger Casement’s life seems to be something of a sore point among critics, who don’t quite put it among his best. But then literature doesn’t always have to be a reaching towards a benchmark. Sometimes a story needs to be told, and the how of it can take a back seat.I suppose that is how The Dream of the Celt must be viewed. Mario Vargas Llosa takes a subject as complicated & layered as Sir Roger Casement’s life, & tells us a haunted, dark, visually disturbing tale that is not for the faint of heart. The telling is not that important, he seems to say, look at who this great man was, the places he went to, the people he met & the things he did. And we do. Sir Roger Casement emerges from the ashes as a noble soul, a man who worked tirelessly for the freedom the indigenous people of Africa & South America from the cruelties of colonialism. These, again, are things we know - the brutishness of the Belgian overlords in the Congo & the cruelties of the Amazon basin in Peru & Brazil, but in taking us close to, in Conrad’s vision, the ‘Heart of Darkness’, Llosa manages to make us relive the horror of imperialism all over again. His birth, his beliefs, his homosexuality, the radical Irish nationalism of his later years - Llosa’s novel is the reimagination of an entire life & the causes it was dedicated towards; a celebration of one of the most large-hearted, brave & fearless humanitarians to have ever lived.Llosa was born in Peru, & the motivation for celebrating someone who did so much for Peru is evident. But the fact remains that because of his controversial work in the cause of Irish independence & as a homosexual from a rigidly Catholic community, he would not be recognized for a long as the great Irish hero he was. Such are the ways of the world.But that did change slowly, and Sir Roger Casement was embraced for what he truly was. As Llosa himself puts it in the epilogue, “..(it took time for Ireland to) accept that a hero and a martyr is not an abstract prototype or a model of perfection but a human being made of contradictions and contrasts, weakness and greatness..” Sometimes a story just needs to be told. تفرحني الرواية في أن فردا واحدا استطاع تغيير مايرتكب في الغابة من أجل مطاط واسهم ولم ينجح في مافي يديه ليقدمه لبلده وإصراره كل مرة على تعلم لغة محال ان يتعلمها وافرحني كذلك انه تم تكريمه لكن بعد ماذا بعد أن اخذ صورة سيئة ومات شنقا؟
What do You think about O Sonho Do Celta (2010)?
Bueno muy Bueno. Un poco de conocimiento sobre el conflicto de Irlanda Del Norte con Inglaterra.
—dipti
An interesting take on loyalty, personal desire and dedication.Beautifully detailed.
—Dinah
Que decepcion de libro! Esperaba mas como otros excelentes libros del autor.
—mahi
Didn't finish...ro rhyme or reason sometimes why a book does not grab me..
—caitlin
