The next book by 2010 Nobel Literature Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa is about the life of Roger Casement, the Irish rebel who was executed by the British in August 1916 after attempting to run guns from Germany to Ireland.
Vargas Llosa traveled form Peru to to Banna Strand, in County Kerry where Casement was arrested to research "El Sueno del Celta" ("The Dream of the Celt"), due to be published next month.
Mario Vargas Llosa is a legendary writer in in the Spanish-speaking world. He has has written more than 30 novels, plays and essays, including Conversation in the Cathedral and The Green House.
The Nobel prize winner has dedicated three years of his life to studying Casement.."I do not remember where I found this character, but he was in a biography of Joseph Conrad. At first I was curious enough, especially because I saw that he had been in the Amazon, Amazonian Peru. I started looking for materials about him and the next thing he had gripped me . "said Vargo Llosa.
Casement, a British diplomat, exposed the terrible treatment of native workers in the Congo by the Belgian government and the British then sent him investigate the situation of Indians working in the extraction of rubber in the Amazon in the region of Putumayo, on the border between Colombia and Peru.
"Roger Casement is one of the first Europeans who had a clear awareness of what was colonialism and denouncing its abuses." said Vargas Llosa.
After he was captured and spent several months in prison, Roger Casement was eventually sentenced to death for treason after a trial that shocked English society by the airing of the supposed Casement diaries which recounted lurid homosexual affairs, and whose authenticity is still uncertain.
"Casement is a character that bothers a lot to the Irish themselves, because there is a controversial legend about alleged gay sexual practices attributed to him, you never know if there a basis in reality or as part of a British intelligence operation to discredit him. " said Vargo Llosa.
The Swedish Academy said it honoured the 74-year-old author for mapping the "structures of power and (for) his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat".The academy’s permanent secretary, Peter Englund, said Vargas Llosa is "a divinely gifted story-teller."
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.seanomelbourne | Oct 11, 2010, 06:51 PM EDT
An Irishman ratted on Roger C. Dillon not the Irish nation it is disingenuous of you to castigate the Irish people as worthless it shows your anti-Irish bias. Casement was one of the greats of his time. Using an Irish hero to demonize the Irish is moronic,and shows your bitterness for what it is.
GeorgeDillon | Oct 11, 2010, 02:48 PM EDT
Remember that it was the Irish who betrayed Casement. No British soldiers were present when he came ashore in Kerry. But the spineless Irish turned him over to the British Army to be hanged. Seanmelbourne, were your ancestors in the crowd who surrounded Casement and turned him in?
PolinDeB | Oct 10, 2010, 07:35 AM EDT
oppss... my great grandmother was a Dillon.. I don't think she'd think i was worthless, though she might tell me to get a husband ... ;)
PolinDeB | Oct 10, 2010, 07:33 AM EDT
Wow.. how life has change.. Seems like Gay Irish have always been cool ;) So when's New York going to let them march or perhaps they'll have David Norris as marshal.. ;)
seanomelbourne | Oct 09, 2010, 10:27 PM EDT
I am glad you corrected my grammar and you agree that you are a moron
GeorgeDillon | Oct 09, 2010, 03:33 AM EDT
seanom: "Dillon your a moron." It's "you're".
kickstar | Oct 08, 2010, 10:01 PM EDT
An outsiders perspective on an incredibly Brave Great and controversial Irishman who had a boundless love of Ireland the North Antrim coast and Murlough Bay in Particular,is a book I look forward to reading, I often wonder what an Ireland With Roger Casement in it would have looked like, I don't think Con Men like Devalera would have survived his honesty, let alone the ancestors of the current sward of Gangsters.
seanomelbourne | Oct 08, 2010, 06:40 PM EDT
Dillon your a moron.
GeorgeDillon | Oct 08, 2010, 05:37 PM EDT
I voted for Casement as Greatest Ever Irish Person. It's wonderful that Vargas Llosa's book will make people outside Ireland aware of this great man. Come to think of it, it may make Irish people aware of Casement--most Irish people I know could tell you who's who on the latest English TV soap opera but couldn't tell you one thing about Roger C. Casement wasted his life for the worthless Irish, they did not deserve him or his sacrifice.
Irishphotograph | Oct 08, 2010, 11:14 AM EDT
Casement and my grandfather's uncle John Devoy (IRB) were comrades in the struggle for Ireland's Freedom. Catch me on FB my name is David Hayes with a photo of a Ryanair plane.