Be Specific About Books Concering The War of the End of the World
| Original Title: | La guerra del fin del mundo |
| ISBN: | 0571139612 (ISBN13: 9780571139613) |
| Edition Language: | English URL http://www.faber.co.uk/9780571288632-the-war-of-the-end-of-the-world.html |
| Setting: | Canudos,1897(Brazil) |
| Literary Awards: | PEN Translation Prize for Prose for Helen R. Lane (1985) |
Mario Vargas Llosa
Paperback | Pages: 568 pages Rating: 4.22 | 8127 Users | 663 Reviews
Point Of Books The War of the End of the World
| Title | : | The War of the End of the World |
| Author | : | Mario Vargas Llosa |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | UK / AUS / NZ |
| Pages | : | Pages: 568 pages |
| Published | : | 1986 by Faber Faber Inc (first published 1981) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Literature. Novels |
Narrative As Books The War of the End of the World
Practical EschatologyAt precisely the time that Fyodor Dostoevsky was writing of the Grand Inquisitor and his confrontation with a Jesus returned to the world (1879-80), the events he was fictionalising were playing themselves out in the scrublands of the Brazilian State of Bahia. In fact, the Brazilian drama surpasses Dostoevsky’s plot by including all the celebrities from the original biblical stories. Who says history doesn’t repeat itself?
Mario Vargas Llosa’s The War of the End of the World is a docu-fictional account of the so-called War of Canudos and the events leading to it from 1877 to 1897. In Vargas Llosa’s account it doesn’t take much imagination to identify Antonio, The Counsellor, as Jesus; the revolutionary Scotsman, Galileo Gall, as St. Paul; the local administrative power, Baron de Canabrava, as Pilate; and the psycho-fanatic, Big Joao, as Judas. The Mystic, The Revolutionary, Satan, and The Betrayer could be playing out their cosmic roles rather than merely bit parts in a provincial theatre.
Antonio’s disciples (the wretchedly poor, the dispossessed, criminals, the psychologically needy), followed Antonio in increasingly large and militant groups as he roamed the Galilee of Bahia State. Wherever they went both plagues and miracles were reported, thus combining Old and New testament references. The disciples had no means of support but lived off the contributions of food and water offered in the villages they entered. Antonio preached and the band grew.
What he preached was a kind of repentance: the rejection of political republicanism and the return to monarchy (Brazil became the realm of the Portuguese king after the Napoleonic putsch of his country in 1807). The details of things to be held anathema were derivative: irreligion, taxes and the metric system. Let the Samaritans of the South in Rio and São Paulo have their republican apostasy, Antonio and his followers knew the joys of the true Kingdom of God (ruled by Dom Pedro of course) with its capital in Salvador. They resisted the forces of the state like the Maccabees at Masada. Their attack formation was that of a religious holy day procession; they used whatever weaponry available in close combat. They did not mind suffering casualties of ten to one for the cause.
Galileo Gall was the (mythical, unhistorical) Osama bin Laden of his day. He represents how the movement was shaped by cultural forces outside of Brazil and often quite opposed to the teaching of Antonio. Gall was persona non grata in his native Britain, jailed in Turkey, Egypt and the USA for proletarian agitation and unionising, and wanted for murder in France, in Spain, and in Portugal. His gospel was that of the anarchists Proudhon and Bakunin. Gall's anthropological vision was only slightly less radical than that of St. Paul. He was convinced that phrenology, the study of the shape of the head, told all. For Paul, only belief mattered, for Galileo it was hat size.
As with the movement of Jesus, Antonio’s went well at first. But success, as so often, was its own undoing. As a fiction structured around historical events, there is never any doubt that everything will end in tears and death. Vargas Llosa’s brilliance lies not in creating suspense about the outcome but about the development of the characters as they realise what they are themselves creating. For me this is the magic of The War of the End of the World.
It is also a rather splendid allegory of the early development of Christianity. Vargas Llosa's insertion of the Paul-character in the form of Galileo Gall suggests that he meant such an allegorical interpretation. The rebel who ensures both the dissemination and the distortion of the message of hope was an ideological as well as literary temptation he couldn't resist.
Rating Of Books The War of the End of the World
Ratings: 4.22 From 8127 Users | 663 ReviewsComment On Of Books The War of the End of the World
An extremely interesting book, brilliantly executed and conceived. It is clear that this is a writer of the first order, though I do not know (I doubt, actually) that the voice is representative of Vargas Llosa's other works. An historical novel, set at the end of the 19th cen., there is a certain archaism and hieratic nature in the writing which is appropriate to -- and which works, given the topic -- but which can, in the end, be fatiguing.The book explores a realm of moral ambiguity, and in aThat a "mad man" walking from village to village in the poor northeast of Brazil in the state of Bahia, during the late 1800's preaching to the poor the brotherhood of all, and the end of the world would cause the deaths of countless people, and shake the very foundation of the new republic ... is unfathomable. Since the abolition of slavery and the monarchy less then a decade ago 1888, 1889, many homeless slaves have nowhere to go or feel wanted anywhere, white farm workers no jobs, neglected
This is a book I ought to have picked up way back when I was a teen-ager and could stomach these excessively long-winded South American novels. Don't get me wrong...I found the book sort of fascinating until about the last 150 pages. And then I realized it was just going to go on in the same circles until it ran out of steam. And then, folks, I skipped to the final five pages and read those. The last paragraph is worth it. Those 145 pages I skipped, I find it difficult to believe I've missed
This novel reminds me forcefully of Conor Cruise O'Brien's play "Murderous Angels" about men in thrall to conflicting ideals that lead them to disaster. O'Brien's play was written in the 1960s and set in the 1960s. Vargas Llosa wrote his novel at the turn of the millennium but set it in the 1890s. The ideals that OBrien focused on (the "Murderous Angels" in peoples heads) thus seem more contemporary: freedom and peace, whereas Vargas Llosa sets religious fundamentalism against nationalism,
I find it very difficult to put into words my thoughts on this book. This is a historical novel based on the peasant revolt that took place in Brazil in the late 19th century when a renegade priest and his followers took over an abandoned estate in Canudos and established a community that refused to recognize the authority of the newly established republic, the old catholic church or civil marriages. Money was outlawed. There could be no taxation, census taking, marriage or ownership of property
Practical EschatologyAt precisely the time that Fyodor Dostoevsky was writing of the Grand Inquisitor and his confrontation with a Jesus returned to the world (1879-80), the events he was fictionalising were playing themselves out in the scrublands of the Brazilian State of Bahia. In fact, the Brazilian drama surpasses Dostoevskys plot by including all the celebrities from the original biblical stories. Who says history doesnt repeat itself?Mario Vargas Llosas The War of the End of the World is
Do the rhetorical quarrels of bourgeois political parties have anything to do with the interests of the humble and downtrodden?The question is posed and the entire novel is a meticulous answer to this question.There are some strange pages in the history of humankind and the novel is an endeavor to open one of such pages. The central figure is a magnetic person whose magnetism cant be explained rationally but the thousands were on his side and they fought unselfishly and desperately for their
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