The Discreet Hero
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
Felicito Yanaque has raised himself from poverty to ownership of a trucking business. His two sons work for him. He receives a threatening letter demanding protection money. The police don't take him seriously, Felicito refuses to pay up and gets sucked into a nightmare. He becomes a reluctant public hero. Then his mistress is kidnapped, and matters become seriously complicated. And he finds that his troubles have begun very close to home.
His fate is interwoven with the story of Rigoberto, a wealthy Lima insurance executive. His boss and old friend, Ismael, suddenly announces that he is marrying his housekeeper, a chola from Piura, to the consternation of his twin sons, a pair of brutal wasters. Ismael escapes to Europe with his new bride, leaving Rigoberto to face the twins' threats, and their claims that he connived with a scheming woman to rob an old man of his fortune. Rigoberto is hounded by the press and TV. Meanwhile, his only son is having visions of a mysterious stranger who may or may not be the devil...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nobel laureate Llosa (The Feast of the Goat) returns to smalltown Peru in this lyrical and witty new novel. The story revolves around two men: Felic to Yanaque in Piura and Ismael Carrera in Lima. Don Felic to, owner of a small transport company, is extorted for protection money, but steadfastly refuses to pay. Ismael is a wealthy septuagenarian who marries his housekeeper partly to spite his avaricious sons. After Ismael and his new wife disappear on a long honeymoon, his longtime employee Don Rigoberto is left to deal with the aftermath and Ismael's sons, appropriately dubbed "the hyenas." Don Felic to finds some consolation with his mistress, Mabel, until she, too, disappears. The alternating story lines eventually converge amid scandal, kidnapping, and death. Llosa populates the novel with many down-home characters from his previous novels Lituma, Don Rigoberto, Lucrecia, Fonchito and modern-day Peru itself plays an important role. Throughout, Llosa is a master of the slow build: he layers disparate, suspenseful, and competing stories into a larger, fuller narrative that seamlessly arrives at its satisfying conclusion. A vivid tale of fathers and sons, rich and poor, this novel gives the world another reason to celebrate Llosa.
