Not sure whether Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa’s new novel, El Sueño del Celta (The Dream of the Celt), has been published in English yet — so I might be spoiling it for some future interested readers if it hasn’t — but halfway through the story about the Irish diplomat-turned-nationalist Roger Casement, I already regretted coming across these photographs by Juan Carlos Tomasi (samples above and below) before reading the book. I couldn’t help but picture Casement (who was sent to Congo in 1883, where he met H.M. Stanley and Joseph Conrad) as a nineteenth century Vargas Llosa on a field trip. Granted, the book is much better than Sir Vidia’s.
I wanted you to explain/write more about the book, about the images (oh the horror)! But the ominous “Granted, the book is much better than Sir Vidia’s” did sort of say it all…
Is that a statue of Kabila in the first image?
@Andrew: Stanley’s. ‘Uncomfortably on his back, a raised hand clutching a broken baton.’