The Feast of the Goat

Urania Cabral, 49, has lived her whole life terrified and empty-handed. When she goes back to her home Dominican Republic, she finds herself reliving the events of 1961, when the country's capital was still named Trujillo City and a single elderly man frightened a population of three million people. Rafael Trujillo, often known as the Goat by the Dominicans, is a sadistic and sick tyrant who uses murder and extortion to control those in his inner circle. Cowardice and malice are becoming commonplace in Trujillo's ostentatious palace. However, Trujillo's hold is weakening. A plot exists to harm him, and a Machiavellian uprising is under progress that will undoubtedly result in violence. Giving voice to the historical Trujillo and the victims—both innocent and complicit—drawn into his deadly orbit, Mario Vargas Llosa describes the fall of a regime and the beginning of a terrible democracy in this "masterpiece of Latin American and world literature, and one of the finest political novels ever written" (Bookforum).