Vargas Llosa's Fiesta Del Chivo

Ironically, I came across some of the best works of Latin American literature I ever read while in the United States. While I was living in Colombia, I had not read much that had a significant impact on me, it was not until I joined Mrs. Pearson’s class during my sophomore year of high school that I finally found my niche. As a literature teacher, she has dedicated her life to curating a list of great Latin American novels, so us students would only get to read the cream of the crop: Neruda, Garcia Marquez, Mistral, Benedetti, Allende, etc. Any book enthusiast knows they are formidable well-known writers, some of them even Nobel laureates. This mighty woman whom looked up to, little by little seduced me with poems, short stories, and novels.
Vargas Llosa’s Fiesta del Chivo is a novel that illustrates the truth about politics and uncovers how gruesome and disgusting it can be. It is about a dictator that feeds off the misfortunes of his own people and takes the innocence away from a 14-year-old girl (who was the same age I was while I was reading this book). The most captivating and disturbing moment of the book is when he deceives the woman he loves the most: his own mother. How can so much evil exist in one single person and posses absolutely no redeeming qualities? As a consequence, I was completely perturbed and shocked, I had been through remarkably tough situations, but never something as horrible as a regime stripping my life away. Suddenly, I was immersed in the lives and struggles of characters of a historical novel, meaning that the events narrated most likely happened in real life. Moreover, this terrified me and kept me up at night, yet it sucked me in and kept me interested. Finally, this work of literature opened a new door to more historical novels and most importantly sensitized me and made me empathetic because through Vargas Llosa’s writing, I felt the people’s