Vargas Llosa in Congo
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.
