Product Description

The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta is an astute psychological portrait of a modern revolutionary and a searching account of an old friend's struggle to understand him. First published in English in 1986, the novel probes the long and checkered history of radical politics in Latin America.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #138035 in Books
• Published on: 1998-06-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Despair hangs over this somber novel, a desolation as omnipresent as the garbage dumped on the streets of the author's native Lima. The setting is Peru in the near future, a military dictatorship besieged by Cuban-backed rebels and defended by U.S. Marines. An unnamed writer interviews people who were involved with his former classmate, Mayta, an idealistic radical whose journey through the various sects of the Peruvian left eventually led to his participation in a pathetic, doomed uprising in 1958. The writer seeks to understand what prompted Mayta to make this futile gesture, but finds only a tangle of disputed facts and self-serving statements; Mayta, he is told, was a homosexual, a police informant, even a thief. What is the truth? "Since it is impossible to know what's really happening, we Peruvians lie, invent, dream, and take refuge in illusions . . . Peruvian life, a life in which so few actually do read, has become literary." Readers acquainted with the author's previous work will recognize this as a central theme in all his writing, but not even in The War of the End of the World was it stated so flatly, so bleakly. The sourness and hopelessness of Vargas Llosa's vision are sadly appropriate to the terrible situation in Latin America today, but they give the novel a mean tone that's difficult to appreciate. Mayta is a book one can admire and respect without really liking it very much. U.K. rights: Faber & Faber; translation rights: Carmen Balcells. January
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Like his highly praised The War of the End of the World ( LJ 9/1/84), Vargas Llosa's new novel is based on a historical incident and points to the futility of fanaticism in politics. The narrator is a novelist investigating the life of Mayta, who participated in a fiasco of a rebellion 30 years before. To those he interviews the narrator readily admits his intention to write a novel, and the novel he writes is a skillful blend of events and his investigations into them. When asked why he goes to so much trouble digging up the past, he answers, "Because I'm a realist, in my novels I always try to lie knowing why I do it." The real fascination in this novel is that it is the story of its own creation. L.M. Lewis, Social Science Dept., Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"With [The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta] Mario Vargas Llosa . . . has replaced Gabriel García Márquez as the South American novelist for gringos to catch up on." --John Updike, The New Yorker

"A glittering trompe l'oeil of a novel about the revolutionary temperament--and the nature of fiction." --The New York Times

"Mario Vargas Llosa [is] one of the master storytellers of our time." --Denis Lynn Heyck, Chicago Tribune Book World

"In a way, this novel about an obscure Peruvian revolutionary is a perfect introduction to Vargas Llosa." --Terrence Rafferty, The Nation
-- Review

Customer Reviews

A Magical Find
I can't resist the chance to be the first reviewer of this superb work. If you haven't read books by Llosa, you should, and this is a great place to start. The plot and writing style of the book call to mind the complexities and sense of fun in Nabokov and Pynchon, but with a strong sense of heart that both of the other authors are often faulted for lacking. The story is this: A writer in contemporary Peru decides to write a novel about a failed revolution of the 1960's that was perpetrated by a high school classmate (Alejandro Mayta). The novel begins in the present with his idea, his current recollections of the classmate from long ago, his interviews with people associated with the failed revolt and then, voila, there is a subtle transition (well done in the translation) between the idea and research for the story and then the novel actually appearing on the page as the author begins to obtain more mastery over the material. The amazing shift between "I want to write this guy's story" and then the story actually taking over the novel is artfully done. But, in addition to the stylistic triumph, the book has some wonderful themes, especially the hazy line between truth and fiction that is illuminated by an end-of-novel encounter, in the present, between the author and the subject, now imprisoned, of his novel. Without spoiling it, all is not as it appears and the book raises the question about whether any author can pen any "Real Life" but his own.

Is truth garbage or is the garbage the truth ?
People always repeat the phrase, "don't judge a book by its cover", but the cover of my copy of THE REAL LIFE OF ALEJANDRO MAYTA expresses the content more appropriately than almost any other cover I can remember in that it points directly to Peru and the central problem of literature. A mass of Peruvian-style figures stand in darkness, almost obscured. You have to look carefully to see them at all. A single chink in the cell door, a single beam of light in a dark place---all that is revealed in color are the eyes and brow of a solitary man. Do we know what is happening in Peru---exploited, misgoverned, racked by revolution and poverty ? Can we know what really happens in life ? Can we understand the motivations and deepest emotions of other human beings ? Can literature actually create or, at least, reproduce these ?

Vargas Llosa creates a gripping novel out of unlikely pieces. An obscure Trotskyite revolutionary, a member of a party whose membership stands at seven, gets involved in an uprising in an Andean town in 1958. The author-as-narrator is in Paris at the time. He returns to Peru later and in 1983, spends a year trying to track down the people involved (family, colleagues, co-conspirators), to learn what motivated this event and its central character, Alejandro Mayta. He interviews everyone he can find. We jump between these interviews and the re-creation (or is it the actual truth ?) of what happened twenty-five years before. The time line is obscured. We shift constantly between two or more times on every other page, sometimes even on one page. This is a literary trick which some people may find annoying or disconcerting, yet I urge you to stay with the novel. Slowly, the author puts together a picture of an idealistic revolutionary who dissented from nearly everything. The sources tell him of a homosexual dreamer who lived a secretive life in every respect, who had no money, and who was (or wasn't) the inspiration behind the Andean mini-revolt of 1958. "If he had been able to control his sentiments and instincts, he wouldn't have led the double life he led, he wouldn't have had to deal with the intrinsic split between being, by day, a clandestine militant totally given over to the task of changing the world, and, by night, a pervert on the prowl..." We begin to understand Mayta, though some of the interviewees are obviously lying. But Vargas Llosa creates a present (1983) in which Peru is overwhelmed by a Vietnam-like war---invaded by leftwing Cuban and Bolivian forces with Soviet help, who are counterattacked by American marines and airforce. Cuzco is destroyed, the country is collapsing. Though Sendero Luminoso did bring Peru almost to its knees, none of this happened. So can we believe the stories told by everyone about Alejandro Mayta ? Is the story about Mayta years ago true as written by our narrator ? I mean, he's obviously exaggerating even about the present. Suddenly, after a vivid description of the uprising, the narrative ends. The Rashomon-like last 34 pages reveal everything or nothing. We are left with questions, but no answers. Vargas Llosa writes, "Since it is impossible to know what's really happening, we Peruvians lie, invent, dream, and take refuge in illusion. Because of these strange circumstances, Peruvian life, a life in which so few actually do read, has become literary." No matter what you decide, if you live in Peru, you'll have to face the garbage in the streets. In America, it's on TV. There's a lot of garbage around us. Is it in people's minds as well ? Can there be truth ? This is the question this powerful, disturbing book leaves with you. A tour de force.

Exceptionally good
I started this book with a slight hesitation. I wasn't so sure if I'd really enjoy a novel about South/Central American politics. What I found instead was a brilliant book that walks the line between invention and reality. The surprise ending of this book is not quite as explosive as the endign to The sixth sense (but almost.) This book is fascinating in the combination of the erotic with the poetic. And then in the last chapter, rather than feeling unforgiving for the fact that I'd been "deceived", I was thrilled that I HAD the wool pulled over my eyes. How? you may ask? I will not say any more. Let's just say that this story on a writer's quest for truth, and the truth as he sees it is a great intoroduction to the works of Vargas Llosa, and one that you won't be able to get out of your mind. Don't be surprised if you find yourself up at night thinking on the myriad plot points. That's when you know a book really was worth your time.