SOURCE: Shakespeare, Sebastian. Review of The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa. New Statesman 131, no. 4550 (25 March 2002): 57.

In the following review, Shakespeare offers a mixed assessment of The Feast of the Goat, noting that “even if this is not a great novel, Vargas Llosa is still a great storyteller.”

Mario Vargas Llosa's new novel [The Feast of the Goat] concerns the last days of the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo before he was assassinated in 1961. Mixing fiction and fact, the book offers a masterly portrayal of this most emblematic of tyrants, who ruled his country for 31 years. It is a miracle that this emperor wore any clothes at all, because he spent most of his time fornicating in bed. A serial philanderer, he sent his ministers on missions abroad in order to seduce their wives. Known as the Goat, the Benefactor, the Father of the New Nation. Trujillo...