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Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1983 (4a ed. 1987); 669, [4] p.; 19,5 cm (Biblioteca Breve)
Description
A Haunting tale of power, corruption, and the complex search for identity Conversation in The Cathedral takes place in 1950s Peru during the dictatorship of Manuel A. Odría. Over beers and a sea of freely spoken words, the conversation flows between two individuals, Santiago and Ambrosia, who talk of their tormented lives and of the overall degradation and frustration that has slowly taken over their town. Through a complicated web of secrets and historical references, Mario Vargas Llosa analyzes the mental and moral mechanisms that govern power and the people behind it. More than a historic analysis, Conversation in The Cathedral is a groundbreaking novel that tackles identity as well as the role of a citizen and how a lack of personal freedom can forever scar a people and a nation.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member kidzdoc
Santiago Zavala is the 30 year old son of a powerful Peruvian senator, who is estranged from his upper middle class family and eking out a meager existence as a investigational journalist in Lima. One day during an afternoon siesta his wife tells him that two black men snatched her beloved dog out
The conversation is interspersed with other conversations that take place a few years before, during the dictatorial presidency of Manuel Odría (1948-56). Ambrosio was also formerly employed by the despicable and cunning Don Cayo Bermúdez, who was Odría's Director of Security and Minister for Public Order and the enemy of the senator. Santiago had previously learned that Ambrosio had been accused of the brutal murder of Bermúdez's mistress while he worked for Senatory Zavala, but Ambrosio reveals much more unsavory information about himself, the senator and Bermúdez, and the extent of the depravity of the Odría regime.
Llosa gives us an unsettling and unforgettable view of the effect of dictatorship and corruption on individuals of all levels of Peruvian society during and after Odría. All are adversely affected, even Bermúdez, who profits more than anyone from the regime.
This book was not an easy read, particularly in its first half, as the different conversations are woven together at times, which requires close attention and occasional review of previous pages or chapters. I'd encourage anyone who reads this book to be aware of this in advance, as lriley did in his review, and to stick with it, as most of the latter half in the book does not use this technique, making for a faster read.
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of her arms, and he goes to the nearest pound to look for the animal. He finds the dog, and one of the men who took it is also there. Santiago quickly recognizes this man as his father's former chauffeur Ambrosio, who has obviously fallen on hard times. Ambrosio takes him to a local dive, La Catedral, where they reminisce about their former lives over the remainder of the afternoon.The conversation is interspersed with other conversations that take place a few years before, during the dictatorial presidency of Manuel Odría (1948-56). Ambrosio was also formerly employed by the despicable and cunning Don Cayo Bermúdez, who was Odría's Director of Security and Minister for Public Order and the enemy of the senator. Santiago had previously learned that Ambrosio had been accused of the brutal murder of Bermúdez's mistress while he worked for Senatory Zavala, but Ambrosio reveals much more unsavory information about himself, the senator and Bermúdez, and the extent of the depravity of the Odría regime.
Llosa gives us an unsettling and unforgettable view of the effect of dictatorship and corruption on individuals of all levels of Peruvian society during and after Odría. All are adversely affected, even Bermúdez, who profits more than anyone from the regime.
This book was not an easy read, particularly in its first half, as the different conversations are woven together at times, which requires close attention and occasional review of previous pages or chapters. I'd encourage anyone who reads this book to be aware of this in advance, as lriley did in his review, and to stick with it, as most of the latter half in the book does not use this technique, making for a faster read.
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LibraryThing member John
Conversation in the Cathedral is a terrific book. Lest anyone be put off with the prospect of a lengthy religious conversation in a place of worship, the "Cathedral" is La Catedral, a rundown, dingy bar where Santiago has a long talk with Ambrosio, a black man who once worked as a chauffeur for
The book is a story about the rise and fall, the twists and turns of political and social power, about pervasive and specific corruption, about personal freedom and the violence of politics and life in Peru in the 1950s during the dictatorship of Manuel Odria, about the corruption of lives that collapse once the ephemera of money and power and influence disappear, about a search for identity and the entanglements of personal and family relations and pressures, about love found quietly and unostentatiously, about respect and honour even within a maelstrom of conflicting passions, about how different people deal with society and the pressures it brings to bear, and about how no matter how much you think you know a person, you can never know everything and there may be dark and seemingly inexplicable sides.
Not only does the book have a large canvas of characters and actions, Llosa's style of writing is unique and quite wonderful. Whole chapters of conversations and descriptions switch back and forth changing characters, time, place and perspective. At first I found it disconcerting, not helped when the same character can be called different names (e.g. a nickname, the family name, the first name), but once you catch the rhythm, the effect is terrific. There is no linear progression, or very little of it. Llosa collapses space and time and creates a sense of the simultaneity of life whereby different people are discussing, or acting upon, or considering the same event or action but from very different perspectives, or you see the results of an action or event before you understand the causes, again often through varying perspectives. This greatly enriches an already wonderful story.
I would highly recommend this book.
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Santiago's father. Through the book we learn of Santiago's turbulent relations with his family (mother, father, brother and sister) and of Ambrosio's own very different life. When they meet in La Catedral, Santiago is married and has been working for some years as a reporter for a tabloid newspaper (having much earlier given up university much to the chagrin of his father) and Ambrosio is down on his luck, working in a stinking dog pound where unwanted animals are trussed up in sacks and beaten to death. Elements of the conversation are interspersed throughout the book as various events are recounted. The book is a story about the rise and fall, the twists and turns of political and social power, about pervasive and specific corruption, about personal freedom and the violence of politics and life in Peru in the 1950s during the dictatorship of Manuel Odria, about the corruption of lives that collapse once the ephemera of money and power and influence disappear, about a search for identity and the entanglements of personal and family relations and pressures, about love found quietly and unostentatiously, about respect and honour even within a maelstrom of conflicting passions, about how different people deal with society and the pressures it brings to bear, and about how no matter how much you think you know a person, you can never know everything and there may be dark and seemingly inexplicable sides.
Not only does the book have a large canvas of characters and actions, Llosa's style of writing is unique and quite wonderful. Whole chapters of conversations and descriptions switch back and forth changing characters, time, place and perspective. At first I found it disconcerting, not helped when the same character can be called different names (e.g. a nickname, the family name, the first name), but once you catch the rhythm, the effect is terrific. There is no linear progression, or very little of it. Llosa collapses space and time and creates a sense of the simultaneity of life whereby different people are discussing, or acting upon, or considering the same event or action but from very different perspectives, or you see the results of an action or event before you understand the causes, again often through varying perspectives. This greatly enriches an already wonderful story.
I would highly recommend this book.
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LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
This is a story about one man's movement from favoured son to prodigal to black sheep, set against the double background of thrillerish political machinations in the Odría dictatorship in Spain in the 1950s and a social-realist supporting cast, like Les Miserables if there was no loving God and
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everyone was depressed. It could have been a much better book than it was: Vargas Llosa can occasionally write, and islands of dreamy clarity (?) (!) emerge from a greasy dishwater-brown sea of lazy self-indulgence, soggy sense-description, irritating verbal tics, and piss-poor piss-stream of consciousness, seeming less like he was trying to capture the way thought processes work than that he just couldn't be bothered filling in the missing words or thinking about how his sentences were structured. And sometimes neither do I, but they never gave me a Nobel Prize for it. Show Less
LibraryThing member lriley
Set during the time of the Odria dictatorship in Peru this novel examines the gap between the poor and the powerful probably as well as anything that I have ever read. Santiago the son of an extremely wealthy industrialist rejects that life by first joining a communist party cell and after it is
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squashed becoming a newspaperman over the strident objections of his family especially his doting father (Don Fermin) who plans for him to one day take over his business interests. Ambrosio--the second major voice in this conversation that takes place in a bar called the Cathedral had been connected to Santiago's youth as his fathers black chauffeur and also reluctantly on occasion as his father's lover who when depressed has a taste for masochistic sex. Ambrosio is in the meantime really in love with one of the households maids and more or less all his plans unravel over time as the maid is fired and he becomes involved in various demonstrations against the government leaving the family himself eventually and winding up poverty stricken. Behind all this are the policies and politics of the dictatorship a lot of which we see through the eyes of another character an important government minister Don Cayo and also through his mistress a former nightclub singer Malvina. As for the novel itself this is not a short work but it moves along very nicely--the reader might want to take note of personalities though as there are many and some are sometimes called by nicknames. Vargas Llosa is an excellent writer and this may be his best work. Show Less
LibraryThing member Myhi
First MVL's novel I read.
Great story of a young generation - a guy who's meant to make things move and keep them moving, in spite of a family who's ever wanted a different kinda future for him. Miraflores - Lima, wealthy people, the revolution.
Very daring novel... tough and cruel. A fair
Great story of a young generation - a guy who's meant to make things move and keep them moving, in spite of a family who's ever wanted a different kinda future for him. Miraflores - Lima, wealthy people, the revolution.
Very daring novel... tough and cruel. A fair
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introduction to the following MVL's novels I read. Show Less
LibraryThing member deebee1
One afternoon in the late 1960s somewhere in the streets of Lima, Santiago, goes out in search of the family dog. At the pound, he meets the aging Ambrosio, his father's former chauffeur, whom he has not seen for 15 years. Later, in a lengthy conversation over beers, Santiago and Ambrosio talk of
Santiago is a journalist in a small paper, the son of an influential politician, an idealist who has rejected his social position by embracing an alternative way of life. When Santiago cut his ties with family years ago, many questions were left unanswered, some of them he didn't dare even seek answers to. He tried to eke out a living, found a wife, and fought to get the next story out. This was his life now. The meeting with Ambrosio turns into an intense examination of those years when decisions and acts of people very close to them, and by their own response, would scar and torment them slowly over time. Secrets, a complex web of intrigues, scandals and crimes, repression, were necessary to maintain a "stable" society. Even then, there was an imminent sense of degradation and frustration. Not just a historical narrative, the novel is as much a political and social critique.
The complexity of their stories which detail the corruption and perversions of the few individuals who kept the machinery of the dictatorship oiled and running, is further emphasized by Vargas Llosa's narrative style. Most of this immense book (600+ pages) is composed of snatches of several events or dialogues, happening in different timeframes, interlaced at the level of the sentence. They are stories within the big story, and dialogues within the big dialogue.
Though at times I felt it dragging, overall, the novel is brilliant and Vargas Llosa here is most impressive. Compared with several of his other books which I've read, this is easily his best. And definitely one of the best novels that have come out of Latin America. Highly recommended, of course.
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their lives under the Odria dictatorship two decades earlier. Santiago is a journalist in a small paper, the son of an influential politician, an idealist who has rejected his social position by embracing an alternative way of life. When Santiago cut his ties with family years ago, many questions were left unanswered, some of them he didn't dare even seek answers to. He tried to eke out a living, found a wife, and fought to get the next story out. This was his life now. The meeting with Ambrosio turns into an intense examination of those years when decisions and acts of people very close to them, and by their own response, would scar and torment them slowly over time. Secrets, a complex web of intrigues, scandals and crimes, repression, were necessary to maintain a "stable" society. Even then, there was an imminent sense of degradation and frustration. Not just a historical narrative, the novel is as much a political and social critique.
The complexity of their stories which detail the corruption and perversions of the few individuals who kept the machinery of the dictatorship oiled and running, is further emphasized by Vargas Llosa's narrative style. Most of this immense book (600+ pages) is composed of snatches of several events or dialogues, happening in different timeframes, interlaced at the level of the sentence. They are stories within the big story, and dialogues within the big dialogue.
Though at times I felt it dragging, overall, the novel is brilliant and Vargas Llosa here is most impressive. Compared with several of his other books which I've read, this is easily his best. And definitely one of the best novels that have come out of Latin America. Highly recommended, of course.
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LibraryThing member funkendub
Manuel Odría ruled Peru from 1948 until 1956. His dictatorship was deeply corrupt. His Minister of Internal Affairs, for instance, ran a brothel. That the cabron in charge of internal affairs should run a prostitution ring is, like a death-row guard named Mort, almost unbearably ironic. In this
Mario Vargas Llosa’s sweeping novel is a history of Peru and Latin American dictatorships told in a Joycean late-1960s conversation in a bar known as The Cathedral. Santiago is the son of an influential politician who, like so many idealistic young people in the ’60s, has rejected his father’s corrupt if pragmatic world. Santiago is a minor editorial-page journalist. One afternoon, at the insistence of his wife, he goes in search of the family dog. Dogs were being picked up as strays, even if they weren’t, because the dogcatchers got paid per animal. At the pound Santiago runs into his father’s now-aging chauffeur, Ambrosio.
Santiago and Ambrosio strike up a conversation at The Cathedral. The subject of their long conversation is the 16-year dictatorship of Odría, as Santiago is after the truth about his father’s involvement in a notorious murder if that era. If, in Ulysses, James Joyce managed to give a political history of Ireland in a single 1904 day’s perambulations, Llosa managed a political history of an entire continent in an afternoon’s conversation. Where Joyce’s masterpiece is full of modernist tricks and the rejection of naturalism, Llosa’s is less flashy, and he is, arguably, the better novelist. He manages to include a vast panoply of characters remembered, either directly or through various media, by Santiago and Ambrosio. The effect is truly cathedral-like, echoing and resonating with the voices of the dead, the broken and the until-now forgotten.
Conversation in the Cathedral was originally published in 1969, when Llosa was 33, and translated into English in 1975. Llosa called it an attempt at a “total novel”: the complete fictionalization of an entire society. Llosa may be, and indeed has been, criticized for his political beliefs (he was a staunch supporter of neoliberlism and admired Margaret Thatcher, for instance; this may well be why he hasn’t won the Nobel, despite being short-listed any number of times), but there is no doubt that he has long been one of the great craftsmen of the long-fiction form. In Conversation, he never drops a stitch, building and maintaining suspense on a monumental scale.
[Originally published in Curled Up with a Good Book]
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case, it’s true. Politicians and industrialists performed perverse acts and whispered state secrets to the prostitutes, giving the Minster, and Odría, leverage on all sorts of situations and people.Mario Vargas Llosa’s sweeping novel is a history of Peru and Latin American dictatorships told in a Joycean late-1960s conversation in a bar known as The Cathedral. Santiago is the son of an influential politician who, like so many idealistic young people in the ’60s, has rejected his father’s corrupt if pragmatic world. Santiago is a minor editorial-page journalist. One afternoon, at the insistence of his wife, he goes in search of the family dog. Dogs were being picked up as strays, even if they weren’t, because the dogcatchers got paid per animal. At the pound Santiago runs into his father’s now-aging chauffeur, Ambrosio.
Santiago and Ambrosio strike up a conversation at The Cathedral. The subject of their long conversation is the 16-year dictatorship of Odría, as Santiago is after the truth about his father’s involvement in a notorious murder if that era. If, in Ulysses, James Joyce managed to give a political history of Ireland in a single 1904 day’s perambulations, Llosa managed a political history of an entire continent in an afternoon’s conversation. Where Joyce’s masterpiece is full of modernist tricks and the rejection of naturalism, Llosa’s is less flashy, and he is, arguably, the better novelist. He manages to include a vast panoply of characters remembered, either directly or through various media, by Santiago and Ambrosio. The effect is truly cathedral-like, echoing and resonating with the voices of the dead, the broken and the until-now forgotten.
Conversation in the Cathedral was originally published in 1969, when Llosa was 33, and translated into English in 1975. Llosa called it an attempt at a “total novel”: the complete fictionalization of an entire society. Llosa may be, and indeed has been, criticized for his political beliefs (he was a staunch supporter of neoliberlism and admired Margaret Thatcher, for instance; this may well be why he hasn’t won the Nobel, despite being short-listed any number of times), but there is no doubt that he has long been one of the great craftsmen of the long-fiction form. In Conversation, he never drops a stitch, building and maintaining suspense on a monumental scale.
[Originally published in Curled Up with a Good Book]
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LibraryThing member snash
This is a book about corruption on both the public and private level throughout society. The ambience of that depravity is created by presenting an entwined story from many points of view jumping frequently from one point of view to another and from one time to another. It sometimes makes following
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the story difficult but it's part of what envelops and swallows the reader up in malaise Show Less
LibraryThing member TheWasp
Sandiago Zavalita, son of a wealthy businessman, meets Ambrosio, his father's old chauffer, when he goes to collect his dog from the pound. Over many beers at "the Catedral" they relate their lives over the intervening years. Set in Peru with a backdrop of political turmoil and corruption.
This is a
This is a
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difficult book to read and will require your full attention. Persevere for the first 200 pages with the multiple simultaneous conversations, the different names for the same people, and the lack of punctuation and as you begin to understand the author's flow you will be rewarded by with masterful story Show Less
LibraryThing member writestuff
Conversation in the Cathedral by Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa is set in Peru during the dictatorship of Manuel A. Odria. The primary character is a man named Santiago, who runs into a man from his past named Ambrosia and they re-connect. I didn’t get very far in this book, sadly. I read to
* The writing is almost stream of consciousness and there are no quotation marks delineating when dialogue begins and ends. I found this very confusing as the characters move back and forth from speaking to “thinking” and I was never sure when actual speech was happening, not to mention who was actually speaking.
* There are many references to the political problems in Peru. Most are subtle, yet the plot seems to rely on the reader having some knowledge about the government and history of the country. I don’t have any knowledge of the time, place or historical references…and so I felt lost early on.
* There are numerous characters who seem to go by more than one name. Within 30 pages, I had no idea who was who and how they were related. I kept paging back, trying to see if I had missed something which could give me direction, but I was still a bit confused.
* Within 10 pages a dog is beaten to death at the animal pound. I am aware that this probably does go on in some countries…but the detailed description just made me ill and I was afraid there was going to be more of this kind of thing throughout the book.
The back of the book reads: “Through a complicated web of secrets and historical references, Mario Vargas Llosa analyzes the mental and oral mechanisms that govern power and the people behind it.” I think the emphasis should be on the word “complicated.”
I really wanted to read this book because I have heard great things about Llosa. But, I am afraid this one was well over my head and thus felt like work rather than enjoyment. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a book that makes me think…but this one just left me feeling like I didn’t have a clue what was going on.
Unrated.
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page 63 before quitting in frustration. There were several reasons I did not finish this book:* The writing is almost stream of consciousness and there are no quotation marks delineating when dialogue begins and ends. I found this very confusing as the characters move back and forth from speaking to “thinking” and I was never sure when actual speech was happening, not to mention who was actually speaking.
* There are many references to the political problems in Peru. Most are subtle, yet the plot seems to rely on the reader having some knowledge about the government and history of the country. I don’t have any knowledge of the time, place or historical references…and so I felt lost early on.
* There are numerous characters who seem to go by more than one name. Within 30 pages, I had no idea who was who and how they were related. I kept paging back, trying to see if I had missed something which could give me direction, but I was still a bit confused.
* Within 10 pages a dog is beaten to death at the animal pound. I am aware that this probably does go on in some countries…but the detailed description just made me ill and I was afraid there was going to be more of this kind of thing throughout the book.
The back of the book reads: “Through a complicated web of secrets and historical references, Mario Vargas Llosa analyzes the mental and oral mechanisms that govern power and the people behind it.” I think the emphasis should be on the word “complicated.”
I really wanted to read this book because I have heard great things about Llosa. But, I am afraid this one was well over my head and thus felt like work rather than enjoyment. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a book that makes me think…but this one just left me feeling like I didn’t have a clue what was going on.
Unrated.
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LibraryThing member charlie68
Not for everyone. The narration goes back and forth in the story and some of the story lines interrupt each other. It makes sense in the end if you have the patience to get that far. Very well written the translator did a great job.
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
A complicated historical novel that speaks to the importance of personal freedom.
Awards
Language
Original publication date
1969 (original Spanish)
1975 (English: Rabassa)
Physical description
669, 4 p.; 19 cm
ISBN
8432204773 / 9788432204777