What are you reading the week of Sunday, August 2, 2015?

[eissa]

10. Just finished "Conversation in the Cathedral"

Another Mario Vargas Llosa masterpiece (yes, I'm still on my South American writers binge!)

This book has a large cast of characters, and it goes back and forth in time quite a bit. Furthermore, some of the dialogue is written in that impressionistic narrative -- the kind that goes on and on without break, and you're not quite sure who is speaking and with whom. But it clears up rather quickly. At first I feared it would be like his novel "The Green House" which I found completely unreadable, but this one isn't like that at all. It starts off a little slow, but picks up as you get submerged into each character's story and towards the last chapters it became hard to put down.

A really remarkable piece of work outlining the corruption of Peruvian politics (which is not unlike so many others in the region) and how it affects the lives of workers and the privileged class.