SOURCE: Schwartz, Lynne Sharon. “Sensationalism and Sensibility.” New Leader 84, no. 6 (November-December 2001): 30-1.

In the following essay, Schwartz takes issue with the recurring “scenes of mayhem, murder, rape, and mutilation” in Vargas Llosa's novels, particularly The Feast of the Goat.

For several decades Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has been outspoken on behalf of free speech and against tyranny, which he knew as a young man in his homeland. In 1990 he ran for the presidency of Peru on a liberal platform, unsuccessfully. He has served as president of PEN International, the writers' organization. He loves to write about rebels and revolutions. So far so good. Even more, however, he loves to write about the brutality that incites rebellion. His novels abound with scenes of mayhem, murder, rape, and mutilation. They verge on the gratuitously lurid, often placing the reader in the unsought role of voyeur. This is not so...