It's good that he did not stop yet. "Harsh Times" is definitely not among his best novels, but it is much better than most novels being published today. The book describes the first free democratic elections in Guatemala in the early 50s and the machinations by the banana company United Fruit, the big landowners and the United States to topple the regime and to re-install the dictatorship of before. In the full Cold War of the times, the United States and the CIA created the communist presence in Central America (is the subtext in this narrative). Countries and peoples that were opposed to the dictatorship of the big landowners were immediately classified as communist and driven into the hands of the Soviet Union. It shows with lots of details of real historic figures how things happened and with which results.
Vargas Llosa writes the book from different perspectives, with a strong narrative around 'Miss Guatemala', Marta Borrero, the wife of the President Carlos Castillo Armas, who fled the country after his assasination in 1957. Armas was brought to power in 1954 after an invasion by the "Liberation Army", supported by some neighbouring countries (Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic) and the United States. His democratically elected predecessor President Arbenz, was forced to abdicate, but Castillo Armas brutal regime (that included the exclusion from voting by illiterate people or 2/3 of the population) was also not deliving everything the very rich expected, including his initiative for big companies to pay taxes.
The other parallel narrative is focused on Johnny Abbes García, the Dominican intelligence officer who sets up the whole murder of Castillo Armas.
Like in many other novels ("Conversations in the Cathedral"), Vargas Llosa intertwines narrative times and parallel situations, which require attentive reading to keep track of what is happening. The political novel is not new to him, and the novel comes close to "The Feast Of The Goat", which is a real masterpiece. "Harsh Times" does not come close to both these novels, but it is more than worth reading.
Vargas Llosa gives a different interpretation of what might have happened during the assassination of Castillo Armas. The official viewpoint is that he was shot twice by a leftist guard who committed suicide right after. Vargas Llosa goes for the version that the assassination was orchestrated by the United States and the Dominican Republic.
The topic of the book is quite timely, because it appears that the foreing policy of the United States has still not learned from the situation, also in recent times, with Afghanistan as the best example.
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