amslersf's review against another edition
3.0
I was so thrilled to find that Llosa had written a book about one of my heros, Roger Casement. Casement was an Irish revolutionary who also became one of the leaders in the first wave of international human rights work out of Europe. He documented colonial atrocities in the Congo and in the Amazon. Although he had a privileged upbringing in the North of Ireland, it was from the people of the Congo and the Amazon that Casement learned the both the physical costs of the colonial economy but also of the process of dehumanization. He would then return to England and Ireland and fight colonialism closer to home.
Llosa does a brilliant job imagining a particular aspet of the the life of Casement; how Casement's personal journal including no small amount of gay sex, becomes his undoing. I had first heard of Casement while in Ireland, although historians had embarrassingly kept him in the closet till late in the twentieth century. However it wasn't until reading Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost that I discovered his internationalism. Gay or not, his radical international solidarity should have put him in the mainstream of political thinking when I was visiting Belfast in the 1990s. There, republicans clearly saw their desire for independence from England as connected to international struggles for liberation in Palestine, Africa and the Americas.
Llosa's tale is a bit long winded. The Irish in Ireland have had to find peace with martyrs, but in America, I can't help looking for a more optimistic end. I'm a bit happier when I can see the arc, though long, bending towards justice. I'll be keeping my eyes open for a biography.
Llosa does a brilliant job imagining a particular aspet of the the life of Casement; how Casement's personal journal including no small amount of gay sex, becomes his undoing. I had first heard of Casement while in Ireland, although historians had embarrassingly kept him in the closet till late in the twentieth century. However it wasn't until reading Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost that I discovered his internationalism. Gay or not, his radical international solidarity should have put him in the mainstream of political thinking when I was visiting Belfast in the 1990s. There, republicans clearly saw their desire for independence from England as connected to international struggles for liberation in Palestine, Africa and the Americas.
Llosa's tale is a bit long winded. The Irish in Ireland have had to find peace with martyrs, but in America, I can't help looking for a more optimistic end. I'm a bit happier when I can see the arc, though long, bending towards justice. I'll be keeping my eyes open for a biography.
jasonfurman's review against another edition
4.0
My third historical novel in a row. And it was not nearly as good as Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies or Laurent Binet's HHhH (not to mention Vargas Llosa's absolutely brilliant The Feast of the Goat or epic The War at the End of the World). Although it was still worth reading.
Bring Up the Bodies is deeply immersed in its history, but tells its story as a novel, largely dialogue between the characters, that makes their psychologies and motivations come alive--all while wearing its history lightly with little exposition or digressions into history. HHhH is an experimental novel that tries to faithfully recount its history, reluctantly follows novelistic conventions for short spurts (and quite well), but then retreats into the narrator's voice to apologize for fabricating anything.
In contrast, the majority of The Dream of the Celt reads more like a history book or biography than a novel. Those parts have little dialogue, few invented characters, and very extended descriptions of Roger Casement's trips to investigate and report on the epic atrocities in King Leopold's Congo and the Putumayo region of Peruvian Amazonia. These parts are almost always interesting (and horrifying), rarely tedious, but are not infused with anything of the special possibilities that is afforded by the novel of going deeper into a character's head, shifting perspectives, showing through stories, a plot, developing multiple characters, or just about anything else.
These historical chapters alternate with somewhat shorter chapters that depict Casement's final days before his execution for treason in Pentonville prison. These are more novelistic, with dialogue, somewhat more interesting characters (e.g., the prison's sheriff), and lots of flashbacks to Casement's role in what eventually became the Easter Uprising. These are perfectly fine, fast reading, but do not come anywhere close to The Feast of the Goat.
Altogether much of the interest of the book comes from learning about Roger Casement (who was largely new to me), more about the Congo and Putumayo, and the Easter Uprising and how that period in Ireland's struggle for independence intersected with the First World War. All interestingly told. And this is reason enough to read the novel.
Bring Up the Bodies is deeply immersed in its history, but tells its story as a novel, largely dialogue between the characters, that makes their psychologies and motivations come alive--all while wearing its history lightly with little exposition or digressions into history. HHhH is an experimental novel that tries to faithfully recount its history, reluctantly follows novelistic conventions for short spurts (and quite well), but then retreats into the narrator's voice to apologize for fabricating anything.
In contrast, the majority of The Dream of the Celt reads more like a history book or biography than a novel. Those parts have little dialogue, few invented characters, and very extended descriptions of Roger Casement's trips to investigate and report on the epic atrocities in King Leopold's Congo and the Putumayo region of Peruvian Amazonia. These parts are almost always interesting (and horrifying), rarely tedious, but are not infused with anything of the special possibilities that is afforded by the novel of going deeper into a character's head, shifting perspectives, showing through stories, a plot, developing multiple characters, or just about anything else.
These historical chapters alternate with somewhat shorter chapters that depict Casement's final days before his execution for treason in Pentonville prison. These are more novelistic, with dialogue, somewhat more interesting characters (e.g., the prison's sheriff), and lots of flashbacks to Casement's role in what eventually became the Easter Uprising. These are perfectly fine, fast reading, but do not come anywhere close to The Feast of the Goat.
Altogether much of the interest of the book comes from learning about Roger Casement (who was largely new to me), more about the Congo and Putumayo, and the Easter Uprising and how that period in Ireland's struggle for independence intersected with the First World War. All interestingly told. And this is reason enough to read the novel.
bgg616's review against another edition
4.0
For me, this was a fascinating read as I knew very little about Roger Casement's life. I really was unaware of the pioneering human rights work he did in Africa, and later in Peru. His time, travels and work on those continents led to later infirmities, and likely carried a psychological toll as well as he observed some horrible atrocities. The reports he wrote on returning from these continents were important in shifting European's attitudes about colonialism and it's purposes. To enlighten and educate people living 'beyond civilization' or to mistreat them and abuse them while stealing all their natural wealth. The story of Casement's fervor for Irish nationalism is not as detailed but because that was the most familiar to me, I didn't feel I needed more here. Casement was a gay man living in a time when his sexuality was completely unaccepted. Casement at times yearns for the lives he sees friends with spouses and children lead. He was lonely for most of his life, and the one person included in the story whom he reportedly loved, may not have been who and what he thought.
I didn't initially know why Vargas Llosa chose to write about Casement because I didn't know of Casement's work in Peru to stop the exploitation of indigeous people in the production of rubber.Vargas Llosa does Casement a service by focusing in detail on the human rights work he did in great detail, while not avoiding the controversy in his life including his 'secret' diaries, his sexuality and his working with the Germans during World War I to get support for an Irish rebellion.
I didn't initially know why Vargas Llosa chose to write about Casement because I didn't know of Casement's work in Peru to stop the exploitation of indigeous people in the production of rubber.Vargas Llosa does Casement a service by focusing in detail on the human rights work he did in great detail, while not avoiding the controversy in his life including his 'secret' diaries, his sexuality and his working with the Germans during World War I to get support for an Irish rebellion.
ray_mikers's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
omustata's review against another edition
dark
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
This book is not really a novel. It is more of a biography of Robert Caseman, a person I knew nothing about but whom I now admire.
fpernett's review against another edition
3.0
Creo que el libro pudo ser más. Me pareció en ocasiones repetitivo y plagado de información técnica que me desviaba de la trama real. Sería interesante porque Vargas Llosa eligió un héroe irlandés como el sujeto de su libro, solo por curiosidad. Definitivamente no es el mejor ejemplo de la narrativa de este gran autor
sushideception's review against another edition
3.0
Find myself irritated once more that Goodreads doesn’t allow half-star ratings, because this book for me was exactly a 2.5. It is neither above nor below average. It is just... fine. In a month or two I will have completely forgotten the fact that I read it at all.
So what makes The Dream of the Celt so middling, so unexceptional, so mediocre? It’s well-written (and well-translated, thanks to the ever-wonderful Edith Grossman) and very, very thorough, but it never actually gets to the heart of its subject, Roger Casement. There are long stretches of this book that read like passages from a Wikipedia article, complete with names and dates that bounced right off my brain. Vargas Llosa clearly researched exhaustively for this book, and he does a good job of synthesising it all into a biographical narrative, but this is the narrative of the life of one man, and by the end I really didn’t feel as if I knew that man at all. I didn’t know what made him tick. I got a brief sketch, a shadow, an idea, but nothing more.
I feel that Mario Vargas Llosa never got to the heart of Roger Casement because that would entail an almost fictional creation of a character with which the reader could sympathise. Casement’s been dead for over a hundred years, can’t very well interview him, and to recreate his personality from scant letters and secondhand accounts would require some leaps of creativity that Vargas Llosa may have been uncomfortable doing. But without that, we’re left with a sort of hollow shell, a name, Roger Casement, that doesn’t really connote anyone real, just these cold and shallow lists of facts and deeds and associations. There is more to a person that that, there’s a spark of life, as stupid as that sounds, and to write a book like this without actually coming close to an exhumation of the soul of Roger Casement is ultimately a useless enterprise—one might as well read a Wikipedia article, for all the warmth and humanity contained therein.
I initially read this for my global literature challenge, but since it focuses so much on Ireland, I don’t feel it’s a very good fit for a Peruvian novel. I may replace it with another book from Peru (that actually involves Peru) but for now it’ll stay.
____________________
Global Challenge: Peru
So what makes The Dream of the Celt so middling, so unexceptional, so mediocre? It’s well-written (and well-translated, thanks to the ever-wonderful Edith Grossman) and very, very thorough, but it never actually gets to the heart of its subject, Roger Casement. There are long stretches of this book that read like passages from a Wikipedia article, complete with names and dates that bounced right off my brain. Vargas Llosa clearly researched exhaustively for this book, and he does a good job of synthesising it all into a biographical narrative, but this is the narrative of the life of one man, and by the end I really didn’t feel as if I knew that man at all. I didn’t know what made him tick. I got a brief sketch, a shadow, an idea, but nothing more.
I feel that Mario Vargas Llosa never got to the heart of Roger Casement because that would entail an almost fictional creation of a character with which the reader could sympathise. Casement’s been dead for over a hundred years, can’t very well interview him, and to recreate his personality from scant letters and secondhand accounts would require some leaps of creativity that Vargas Llosa may have been uncomfortable doing. But without that, we’re left with a sort of hollow shell, a name, Roger Casement, that doesn’t really connote anyone real, just these cold and shallow lists of facts and deeds and associations. There is more to a person that that, there’s a spark of life, as stupid as that sounds, and to write a book like this without actually coming close to an exhumation of the soul of Roger Casement is ultimately a useless enterprise—one might as well read a Wikipedia article, for all the warmth and humanity contained therein.
I initially read this for my global literature challenge, but since it focuses so much on Ireland, I don’t feel it’s a very good fit for a Peruvian novel. I may replace it with another book from Peru (that actually involves Peru) but for now it’ll stay.
____________________
Global Challenge: Peru
federicoleonyleon's review against another edition
3.0
Good read, but as interesting and cold as an article on The Economist
ammarakh's review against another edition
3.0
The Dream of the Celt is Vargas Llosa’s first novel to be translated into English since he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2010. Roger Casement, the famous colonial-enthusiast who was awarded knighthood but later became an Irish nationalist and was hanged for his role in the Easter Rising, is the main character in this novel. Llosa, greatly admired for his literary genius but a controversy when it comes to his conservative political ideology, chose for his latest novel a figure as contradictory as himself. He writes in his epilogue, “a hero or martyr is not an abstract prototype or a model of perfection but a human being made of contradictions and contrasts, weakness and greatness”.
The novel opens with Casement in Pentonville Prison after the Easter Rising hoping that his death sentence would be commuted. Through his visitor he finds out that Scotland Yard has discovered evidence of his homosexual behaviour from his “Black Diaries,” a fact that compromises the chances of his already doomed clemency.
The Dream of the Celt is divided into chapters alternating between Casement in prison reminiscing about his past and a more linear narrative starting from his childhood towards his life as a rebel.
Born to Irish parents, Casement is secretly baptised as Catholic by his mother who had apparently converted to Protestantism to marry his father. As a child he is greatly fascinated with his father’s stories of adventures along the remote frontiers of the Empire. The strict father who never shows his emotions is so heartbroken after his wife’s death that he loses his lucidity and dies when Casement is only 12.
Casement, along with his brother and sister, moves from Dublin to the countryside to live with relatives. Showing a naturalist’s interest in nature and solitude, he enjoys cross-country hikes and at the age of 15 becomes an apprentice in a shipping company. When he is 20, Casement goes to Africa where rubber, “the black gold avidly coveted,” is extracted. His task is to bring to light the truth behind the rumors of atrocities committed by the colonists. Casement soon realises that affairs in Africa are not as told in England.
“I wasn’t aware because I didn’t want to be aware,” he would later realise. He is told that the things that worry him are signs of weakness and that the white have to decide for the natives because “mentally they are closer to the crocodile or hippopotamus” than the civilised Europeans. Ironically enough, the symbol of colonisation for Casement is the chicote or the whip fashioned from the tough hide of hippopotamus. “If rubber was not consumed first, the Congolese would be the ones consumed by a system that was annihilating them by hundreds of thousands,” thinks Casement.
In Congo, he meets Joseph Conrad and they discuss the state of affairs in the new Congo Free State. Thirteen years later, in their second meeting in London, when Casement congratulates Conrad on his novel Heart of Darkness, he is told, “You should have appeared as co-author of that book”. Whereas Conrad’s Congo is a place so dark that it turns ‘civilised’ Europeans into ‘barbarians’, Casement’s Congo is corrupted by the greed and atrocities of the Europeans. It is there that Casement learns the naked truth of extreme cruelties committed in the name of civilisation.
When Casement returns to England he writes a report that highlights the injustices of the Empire and his report on the Belgian Congo and the one that he later writes about Peru were one of the first attempts at international justice and earned him knighthood.
However, his is an attempt to expose the atrocities committed in the name of civilisation, not the emancipation of the indigenous people. Despite his disillusionment with colonialism, Casement keeps advocating the ‘cause’ of civilising Africans as he finds a semblance of redemption in this theory behind colonialism.
Furthermore, his increasing doubts make him appreciate the values of liberal humanism. He writes to one of his friends, “In these jungles I’ve found not only the true face of Leopold II. I’ve also found my true self: the incorrigible Irish man,” and he asks, “Wasn’t Ireland a colony too, like the Congo” and declares, “Like the Irishman I am, I hate the British Empire”.
Individualism cannot survive in such an oppressive atmosphere, resulting in Irish nationalist sentiments in Casement. What follows is Casement’s life as an Irish revolutionary in Germany and his failure to prevent the Easter Rising. He plots to get help from Germany for the freedom of Ireland.
Casement’s homosexuality is discussed only at the end of the novel and that too with supreme caution. Llosa believes that Casement’s diaries are not all truth, that “there is in them a good deal of exaggeration and fiction”.
Individual helplessness against an oppressive reality as well as individual potential, the intersection between culture and politics, outcomes of excessive greed and the search for one true identity are some of the recurrent themes in The Dream of the Celt.
Stylistically speaking, the dialogue and narrative strategies are of modernist nature with a singular point of view and the usage of simple spatial shifts. This literary realism results in a natural account which is, at times, weighed down by the meticulous research.
When Casement discovers the same display of wounds and chains everywhere from Congo to Amazon he says, “The same old story. The never-ending story.” Ironically, Llosa describes how the reader feels about this novel in those two short sentences. It fails to grab the reader the way it should due to a lack of psychological depth and repeated accounts of violence, a result of strict adherence to the policy of “tell, don’t show”.
Reading more like a biography than a historical novel, The Dream of the Celt is not necessarily among Llosa’s strongest works. Perhaps its chief achievement is the reimagining of an extraordinarily complex man without hints of reverence or judgment.
Published in Books & Authors (DAWN)
http://dawn.com/2013/05/26/review-the-dream-of-the-celt-by-mario-vargas-llosa/
The novel opens with Casement in Pentonville Prison after the Easter Rising hoping that his death sentence would be commuted. Through his visitor he finds out that Scotland Yard has discovered evidence of his homosexual behaviour from his “Black Diaries,” a fact that compromises the chances of his already doomed clemency.
The Dream of the Celt is divided into chapters alternating between Casement in prison reminiscing about his past and a more linear narrative starting from his childhood towards his life as a rebel.
Born to Irish parents, Casement is secretly baptised as Catholic by his mother who had apparently converted to Protestantism to marry his father. As a child he is greatly fascinated with his father’s stories of adventures along the remote frontiers of the Empire. The strict father who never shows his emotions is so heartbroken after his wife’s death that he loses his lucidity and dies when Casement is only 12.
Casement, along with his brother and sister, moves from Dublin to the countryside to live with relatives. Showing a naturalist’s interest in nature and solitude, he enjoys cross-country hikes and at the age of 15 becomes an apprentice in a shipping company. When he is 20, Casement goes to Africa where rubber, “the black gold avidly coveted,” is extracted. His task is to bring to light the truth behind the rumors of atrocities committed by the colonists. Casement soon realises that affairs in Africa are not as told in England.
“I wasn’t aware because I didn’t want to be aware,” he would later realise. He is told that the things that worry him are signs of weakness and that the white have to decide for the natives because “mentally they are closer to the crocodile or hippopotamus” than the civilised Europeans. Ironically enough, the symbol of colonisation for Casement is the chicote or the whip fashioned from the tough hide of hippopotamus. “If rubber was not consumed first, the Congolese would be the ones consumed by a system that was annihilating them by hundreds of thousands,” thinks Casement.
In Congo, he meets Joseph Conrad and they discuss the state of affairs in the new Congo Free State. Thirteen years later, in their second meeting in London, when Casement congratulates Conrad on his novel Heart of Darkness, he is told, “You should have appeared as co-author of that book”. Whereas Conrad’s Congo is a place so dark that it turns ‘civilised’ Europeans into ‘barbarians’, Casement’s Congo is corrupted by the greed and atrocities of the Europeans. It is there that Casement learns the naked truth of extreme cruelties committed in the name of civilisation.
When Casement returns to England he writes a report that highlights the injustices of the Empire and his report on the Belgian Congo and the one that he later writes about Peru were one of the first attempts at international justice and earned him knighthood.
However, his is an attempt to expose the atrocities committed in the name of civilisation, not the emancipation of the indigenous people. Despite his disillusionment with colonialism, Casement keeps advocating the ‘cause’ of civilising Africans as he finds a semblance of redemption in this theory behind colonialism.
Furthermore, his increasing doubts make him appreciate the values of liberal humanism. He writes to one of his friends, “In these jungles I’ve found not only the true face of Leopold II. I’ve also found my true self: the incorrigible Irish man,” and he asks, “Wasn’t Ireland a colony too, like the Congo” and declares, “Like the Irishman I am, I hate the British Empire”.
Individualism cannot survive in such an oppressive atmosphere, resulting in Irish nationalist sentiments in Casement. What follows is Casement’s life as an Irish revolutionary in Germany and his failure to prevent the Easter Rising. He plots to get help from Germany for the freedom of Ireland.
Casement’s homosexuality is discussed only at the end of the novel and that too with supreme caution. Llosa believes that Casement’s diaries are not all truth, that “there is in them a good deal of exaggeration and fiction”.
Individual helplessness against an oppressive reality as well as individual potential, the intersection between culture and politics, outcomes of excessive greed and the search for one true identity are some of the recurrent themes in The Dream of the Celt.
Stylistically speaking, the dialogue and narrative strategies are of modernist nature with a singular point of view and the usage of simple spatial shifts. This literary realism results in a natural account which is, at times, weighed down by the meticulous research.
When Casement discovers the same display of wounds and chains everywhere from Congo to Amazon he says, “The same old story. The never-ending story.” Ironically, Llosa describes how the reader feels about this novel in those two short sentences. It fails to grab the reader the way it should due to a lack of psychological depth and repeated accounts of violence, a result of strict adherence to the policy of “tell, don’t show”.
Reading more like a biography than a historical novel, The Dream of the Celt is not necessarily among Llosa’s strongest works. Perhaps its chief achievement is the reimagining of an extraordinarily complex man without hints of reverence or judgment.
Published in Books & Authors (DAWN)
http://dawn.com/2013/05/26/review-the-dream-of-the-celt-by-mario-vargas-llosa/