"Gathering power as it rolls along, this massive, swift-moving fictional take on a grim period in Dominican history shows that Vargas Llosa is still one of the world's premier political novelists." Publishers Weekly

"[A]n ambition worthy of...Balzac, Dickens and Galdós, but with a technical skill...closer to...Flaubert and Henry James." Suzanne Jill Levine, The New York Times Book Review

"A writer deeply sensitive to the overpowering themes of sex and politics...[This is] Vargas Llosa at his best." Juan Tubau, Qué Leer

A tyrant?s last days, told by "a writer deeply sensitive to the overpowering themes of sex and politics . . . " (Juan Tubau, Qué Leer)
Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic — and finds herself reliving the events of 1961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved, ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle (including Urania?s father, a secretary of state now in disgrace) with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo?s gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo?s grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution is already under way that will have bloody consequences of its own.
In this magisterial and long-awaited novel, Mario Vargas Llosa recounts the end of a regime and the terrible birth of a democracy, giving voice to the historical Trujillo and the victims, both innocent and complicit, who were drawn into his deadly orbit.

A Library Journal Best Book Vargas Llosa's vivid historical portrait of a regime of fear and its aftermath It is 1961. The Dominican Republic languishes under economic sanctions; the Catholic church spurs its clergy against the government; from its highest ranks down, the country is arrested in bone-chilling fear. In The Feast of the Goat Vargas Llosa unflinchingly tells the story of a regime's final days and the unsteady efforts of the men who would replace it. His narrative skates between the rituals of the hated dictator, Rafael Trujillo, in his daily routine, and the laying-in-wait of the assasins who will kill him; their initial triumph; and the shock of fear's release--and replacements. In the novel's final chapters we learn Urania Cabral's story, self-imposed exile whose father was Trujillo's cowardly Secretary of State. Drawn back to the country of her birth from 30 years after Trujillo's assasination, the widening scope of the dictator's cruelty finds expression in her story, and a rapt audience in her extended family. In The Feast of the Goat, Vargas Llosa weighs the burden of a corrupt and corruptive regime upon the people who live beneath it. This is a moving portrait of an unrepentant dictator and the unwilling citizens drawn into his orbit.

Mario Vargas Llosa is Peru's foremost writer. In 1995 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor, and the Jerusalem Prize. His many other works include The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, Who Killed Palomino Molero?, and The Storyteller. He lives in London. Edith Grossman has translated the poetry and prose of major Spanish-language authors, including Gabriel Garc¡a Marquez, Alvaro Mutis, and Mayra Montero, as well as Mario Vargas Llosa.