The Feast of the Goat

The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargas Llosa

For three decades, the Dominican Republic lived under the brutal dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, known to some as the Goat, who ruled through terror, corruption and a cult of personality. The Feast of the Goat, by Peruvian Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, is a powerful novel about the final days of his regime and its lasting consequences.

The novel weaves together three interconnected stories. In 1996, Urania Cabral, a successful lawyer living in New York, returns to the Dominican Republic for the first time in decades to visit her elderly father, once a high-ranking official in Trujillo’s government. As she confronts him, painful memories of what happened to her as a young girl begin to surface.

In 1961, Trujillo himself is shown in his final day, an aging tyrant obsessed with control, his health failing and his power beginning to slip. Meanwhile, a group of conspirators waits in the darkness to ambush his car, each driven by personal grievances and hopes of freeing the country. The novel follows the assassination and the chaotic, violent aftermath.

Vargas Llosa combines historical fact and fiction to create a gripping portrait of the psychology of dictatorship, exploring power, fear, complicity, cruelty and the struggle for dignity. The novel is widely considered one of his masterpieces.

Intense and unforgettable, The Feast of the Goat is an essential read for readers of Latin American literature, historical fiction and political novels. It contains scenes of violence, torture and sexual abuse, and is intended for adult readers.