In case you wondered …

… Four Reasons to Read Mario Vargas Llosa - The Common Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Forty years after its original publication, when the novel’s political themes have lost their topicality, it is easier to appreciate that Conversation in the Cathedral is a work of fiction in which Vargas Llosa transformed personal experiences and historical events through his powerful literary imagination. One does not need to know anything about the details of Peruvian history to appreciate the genius of the novel’s literary construction or its moral dimensions—the intensifying anguish of a conflicted individual who does not know what to do about the human misery that surrounds him.