4.0
The War of the End of the World
ByPublisher Description
Deep within the remote backlands of Brazil lies Canudos, home to all the damned of the earth: prostitutes, bandits, beggars, and every kind of outcast. It is a place where history and civilization have been wiped away. There is no money, no taxation, no marriage, no census. Canudos is a cauldron for the revolutionary spirit in its purest form, a state with all the potential for a true, libertarian paradise—and one the Brazilian government is determined to crush at any cost.
In perhaps his most ambitious and tragic novel, Mario Vargas Llosa offers his fictionalized vision of the story of Canudos, inhabiting characters on both sides of the massive, cataclysmic battle between the society and government troops. The resulting novel is a fable of Latin American revolutionary history, an unforgettable story of passion, violence, and the devastation that follows from fanaticism.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe War of the End of the World Reviews
4.0
Diverse representationMemorableMorally ambiguousMultilayeredClever plottingNonlinear narrativeSuspensefulWell-structuredAtmosphericBeautifulDarkEtherealEvocative imageryGrittyHistoricalImmersive world-buildingPicturesqueRealisticSetting fits the storyVivid descriptionsBeautifully-writtenFlowery/lushWittyDeathExplicit sexual contentGriefMurderSexual assaultViolenceWar violence
““Canudos isn’t a story; it’s a tree of stories.” Telling the story of a fanatical priest named the Counselor who converts thieves, murderers, merchants, freaks, a saint, a water diviner, and many many others, he founds a community in the backlands of Brazil. The novel features a TON of overlapping stories and convoluted chronology. This book is also a BEAST; I loved reading it and it still took me 2+ weeks. The nature of fanaticism, government upheaval/overreach, and forgiveness are throughout the book. I would HIGHLY recommend if you’re a fan of denser, more complex narratives and/or historical fiction. (The ending I felt went on just a tad too long, but otherwise the length felt good.)”
“Like the title, the rest of this book is wordy and long-winded. It could have easily been half the size and still achieved the same result. It was a lot of build-up for a disappointing and underwhelming end too. The excessive detail also made it hard to distinguish between characters, events, and settings, which just further deteriorated my reading experience. I'm already not a huge fan of war-based historical fiction and this book just reconfirmed that for me.
Only redeeming qualities were a) the characters were unique and interesting and b) the book raises questions about the many accounts that compose history. Is it possible to understand or represent every side of a conflict? Vargas Llosa seems to argue not and I agree with him. No matter how many perspectives you include, no matter how diverse they are, it's logistically impossible to account for all viewpoints involved in a conflict. Even with the extensive list of characters, this book probably doesn't come close to representing everyone involved in the historical period Vargas Llosa is discussing. I enjoyed thinking about this while reading, but it wasn't enough for more than 2¼ stars.”
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