The Real Life Of Alejandro Mayta

The Real Life of Aljendro Mayta (1984) is another virtuoso performance from Nobel Prize winning Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa. The narrator of the story is a novelist investigating the life of Mayta, who participated in a fiasco of a rebellion 30 years before. The story is told from two perspectives, that of the author in the present facing an uncertain future in which Peru is being invaded by foreign forces and that of flashbacks of the people who were involved in Mayta's failed revolution of 30 years ago. The shifts of perspective that take place between paragraphs are seamless.  Some of the factional communist stuff is somewhat tedious, but Llosa brings to life a fervent radical who is defeated over time by his pure ideals. It's hard not to compare these happenings to those of Peru who has had a long war with radical s over the years and seems to have achieved some stability even though it, like most of its neighbors still has a very uneven economy and quality of life between "the haves" and "the have nots."