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The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

  • Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
  • First Published: 1986
  • Type of Work: Novel
  • Genres: Long fiction

Intending to incorporate the material into a novel, the narrator attempts to reconstruct the life of Alejandro Mayta, a revolutionary who was involved in a minor uprising in the mountains of Peru some thirty years ago. The narrator locates and questions people who knew Mayta during that period. His aunt remembers the night that Mayta met Vallejos and was overwhelmed by the young man’s enthusiasm for revolutionary action, which was unlike the attitude of Mayta’s other companions, who seemed to be interested only in talking about revolution. Because of Vallejos’ unshakable belief that an insurrection in a remote mountain area was not only possible but imminent, Mayta left Lima and joined the rebels. The uprising failed, however, perhaps because fellow conspirators backed out or perhaps because Vallejos changed the date or perhaps because the peasants were not interested. The narrator cannot determine the most probable cause. The narrator also interviews Mayta’s wife, who recalls her brief marriage and her frustrations with Mayta’s all-consuming interest in radical politics and with his sexual preference for men. An important official remembers Mayta’s unselfish devotion to the cause, but another acquaintance calls him a traitor and an informer for the CIA.

As the narrator conducts his interviews, he realizes that all the accounts are different, that each person is remembering his or her own version. Yet the narrator is not concerned with their fabrications, since his own novel will also be a lie. The truth is impossible to determine; “all fictions are lies,” but so is history.

As he weaves his tale of a novelist gathering information, Vargas Llosa experiments with the narrative structure of the novel. The interviews are interspersed with scenes of Mayta’s life many years ago. Woven within these are scenes of a Peru on the verge of collapse: Bolivian and Cuban troops are invading, and the United States Marines are called in by the failing Peruvian government. Caught in the crossfire, villages are being bombed and peasants executed.

This complex novel exposes the myths of revolution and explores the relationship between truth and fiction, author and narrator. Vargas Llosa brilliantly evokes a world where the future seems to hold only “more hunger, more hatred, more oppression, more ignorance, more brutality, more barbarity.”

Vargas Llosa is one of a group of highly acclaimed South American writers. This finely crafted novel will not disappoint his many readers.