Harsh Times: A Novel [J0054]

2021 - HCDJ Excellent condition. Translation by Adrian Nathan West. The true story of Guatemala's political turmoil of the 1950s as only a master of fiction can tell it. Guatemala, 1954, the military coup perpetrated by Carlos Castillo Armas and supported by the CIA topples the government of Jacobo Árbenz. Behind this violent act is a lie passed off as truth, which forever changes the development of Latin America: the accusation by the Eisenhower administration that Árbenz encouraged the spread of Soviet Communism in the Americas. Harsh Times is a story of international conspiracies and conflicting interests in the time of the Cold War, the echoes of which are still felt today. In this thrilling novel, Mario Vargas Llosa fuses reality with two fictions: that of the narrator, who freely re-creates characters and situations, and the one designed by those who would control the politics and the economy of a continent by manipulating its history. Harsh Times is a gripping, revealing novel that directly confronts recent history. No one is better suited to tell this riveting story than Vargas Llosa, and there is no form better for it than his deeply textured fiction. Not since The Feast of the Goat, his classic novel of the downfall of Trujillo's regime in the Dominican Republic, has Vargas Llosa combined politics, characters, and suspense so unforgettably.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Wonderful historical novel. Well written by the Nobel prize winner. I didn't know much about the history in South America, and learned a lot. The inner dialogue of the characters was always very convincing."; "I found this fictional recounting extremely informative and fascinating. It will be impossible for me to eat a banana without thinking about the extreme power of United Fruit and the CIA's overreach into Guatemala."; "A complex but accessible and quite sensational fictional (but authentic) depiction of the destruction of Guatemala by the US government. It's both good history and a mesmerizing story."