Author from Peru releases book about gay British anti-colonist

  

The Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010, the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, 74, launches on Oct. 04th, in Madrid, the book The Dream of the Celtic. The book discusses the British diplomat Roger Casement supposedly gay (1864-1916). Previously, the first Latin American writer to receive the Nobel Prize since the Mexican Octavio Paz, winner in 1990, Vargas Llosa takes part in the event of a conference Frontiers of Thought in Porto Alegre on Thursday (14/10), with tickets already exhausted.

With 500,000 copies, the book will be distributed in all Spanish-speaking countries by the Alfaguara publishing house. Roger Casement denounced various abuses against human rights committed in the Congo during colonization by Belgium. In addition, he traveled to the Peruvian Amazon to denounce the exploitation of rubber with rubber extraction.

Controversy

Casement was also consul in Rio de Janeiro, Santos (SP) and Para Through his work, received the title of Sir. However, in 1916, Casement was accused of the UK, for having rebelled against the British Empire and began to defend the independence of Ireland, his homeland, which led to him being arrested, convicted and executed for treason. Besides being charged with treason, said they found in his diary several cases of sex with other men.

"Casement is a character that bothers a lot to the Irish themselves, because there is a controversial tale about alleged gay sexual practices attributed to him," says Llosa. "You never know if there is a basis in reality or as part of a British intelligence operation to discredit him."

Visionary

But it's not supposed Casement's homosexuality that led him to write the biography of the British diplomat. "I was enchanted by life as diverse and adventurous Casement, colonialism and a great defender of human rights, which anticipated much in time," said the writer, the Agence France Presse. "Roger Casement was one of the first Europeans who had a clear awareness of what was colonialism, denouncing his abuses."

For the director of Alfaguara in Brazil, Roberto Feith, the writer Mario Vargas Llosa has long deserved the Nobel Prize: "More than deserved, is a late Nobel, the breadth, originality and quality of the work of Vargas Llosa. Besides being a great novelist He is a versatile intellectual, erudite and lucid, which is attached to Latin American politics with an eye always original. "

Other books

According to Feith, three other ancient author's novels will be published in Brazil next year, in new translations (among them, The Feast of the Goat). Three other older titles have been purchased by the publisher who has published ten books of Vargas Llosa, with total sales of 179,000 copies since 1996 - 105,000 of them just the trick of The Bad Girl, 2006. The objective of that group Alfaguara, has just published Sabres & Utopias, a collection of his articles and essays on politics.

 

Valmir Costa
BR Press...
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