Guatemala, 1954. The military coup financed and organized by the United States, through the CIA, with the help of the Butcher of Greece, Ambassador John Emil Puerifoy, overthrows the democratically elected government of Jacobo Árbenz. Behind this violent event lies a lie presented as truth and which since then has changed the fate of Latin America: the baseless accusation, by the Eisenhower administration, almost the entire American press, and the powerful United Fruit Company, that Árbenz encouraged Soviet communism. Wild Times is a cynical and blood-soaked canvas of international conspiracies, treacherous situations, and conflicting interests during the Cold War. In this captivating novel, which is directly connected to the famous The Feast of the Goat, Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa recreates reality based on two kinds of fiction: that of the narrator, who freely reconstructs characters and circumstances, and that of the power brokers, who unabashedly sought to control the politics and economy of an entire continent by manipulating its history.
“The reality that Vargas Llosa handles in this book is so intense that it hardly matters that, in order to bring it to light, he uses fiction.” El País
“A gripping literary thriller, delivered with the experience and knowledge of a writer and public intellectual who has passed through active politics.” The New York Times
“A novel as credible and true as so-called History.” Der Spiegel
