The War of the End of the World

The War of the End of the World is an impossibly ambitious book which nevertheless succeeds completely, and in the process confirms that Vargas Llosa deserves to be considered among the great authors of all time. Unlike his other books, which are either frankly autobiographical or significantly based on the author's personal experience, this is a straightforward historical novel, taking place in 1890s northeastern Brazil. It is also a real novel of ideas, confronting very seriously such timeless topics as the relationship of individual to society and of faith and personal belief to law and social order, the source of state authority, and truth/beauty and means/ends issues. While somewhat "modern" in style - the narrative does not proceed in a linear fashion, perspectives shift sharply from one character to the next, and "truth" is often in the eye of the beholder - the book really aspires to be a Great Historical Novel in a classic mode, like The Red and the Black or War and Peace. (Personally, I think it is stronger than either of those; at the very least it belongs on the same shelf.) In other words, it is no post-modern mirror-job, but a serious attempt to engage all thoughtful people - including those who ordinarily do not care for fiction - in a subtle and thorough consideration of the factors that create Peru's Shining Path, or Waco, Jonestown, MOVE, Hamas, etc. Vargas Llosa even manages the trick of being both sympathetic to and critical of all sides. The relationship of the book to the author's subsequent (aborted) political career is also fascinating - it is difficult to believe that an author whose extradinarily acute, and depressing, analyses of politics and ideology would be willing to enter the actual world of politics, yet it is easy to see how he yearns for a real-world solution to the failures of the rich to understand the poor, of the poor to understand the rich, and of organized government to appreciate the value of people's actual lives. I recommend this book to everyone (except perhaps readers who cannot handle some extreme and sustained violence in the last part of the book).