The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Vargas Llosa is gone. But his remarkable oeuvre remains, awaiting many more eager literature aficionados to discover the magic of his back catalog. The following is a review I wrote more than a decade ago in my initial years of being introduced to the wonders of his storytelling.


Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the foremost authors from Latin America and a Nobel Prize winner, but one which I came across quite recently only. I’ve read three of his books so far and what has struck me is the eclectic nature of the subjects he chooses. There is no fixed style per se which I can attribute to him, and yet each of his books pulse with a veneer of brilliance.

This book is a fascinating foray into the wilderness, both in terms of geography as well as human nature. A Peruvian writer chances upon a rare photograph in an art gallery in Florence. The image is that of a remote Amazonian tribe known as the Machiguenga. A group of the tribes people are congregated around a central figure, the mysterious and much revered ‘Storyteller’ of the tribe. This sets off a remarkable set of reminisces in his mind to the past and his brushes with the tribe and cultural anthropology in the South American jungles. Here, there are still some pockets of civilization to be found, which are, amazingly, yet to be touched by the ever widening web of modernity and who still carry on their primitive modes of living with nature. The numbers of these tribes are ever dwindling though, as they are pushed further and further into the jungles by the encroaching foreigners or by mishaps.


A key character here is the narrator’s old university friend, Saul Zuratas, a Jew who was born with a huge birthmark covering a side of his face, and because of which he is called ‘Mascarita’ or Mask. Zuratas is basically an anthropologist but shuns the field after starting to feel they, just like the others, exploit the remote tribes for their ends. He is virtually obsessed with the Machiguenga and with unbridled passion resents the Western attempts to ‘civilize’ them. The narrator remembers the passionate discussions he had with Zuratas in the university cafe on the subject shortly before Mascarita vanishes from public consciousness. A fascinating story unfolds which alternates between telling the story of the Machiguengas as well as delving into the mystery of Zuratas. There are a few big chapters dedicated to the stories told by the Storyteller, and these can lose the uninitiated reader, as they are expressed in a diction resonating with the primitive, and is filled with Machiguenga myths and legends.

The story raises some intriguing questions on civilization and our attempts to modernize the entire world. Is there a virtue in leaving the tribes to their primitive ways or should they be ‘included’ in so called normal society? The Machiguenga are not exactly portrayed as nobles – their practices involve killing babies born with deformities (on being ‘impure’) and frequent suicides for trivial issues. However, they live with nature as they have been doing for centuries and despite the vicious tentacles of progress attempting to engulf them, they still survive. The anthropologists living among them seem to be influenced as strongly by the desire to bring religion to them as well as their educational purposes, which again raises the question – Are we just trying to exploit their weakness to bring them around to our sensibilities?

Despite maybe feeling a bit incomplete towards the end, the climactic revelation is still gripping and makes one ponder even more on the themes of civilization and living. As for me, I’m just glad there are still a lot more from Llosa’s back catalog that I have yet to wade into. If the three books of his that I have already read are an indication of things to come, I can’t wait.



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