Se presenta como una novela, pero esto más bien es un reportaje largo. O, si se quiere, una biografía novelada. Encontramos al protagonista, Roger Casement, en la cárcel pocos días antes de ser ejecutado y, entre visitas de los pocos amigos que le quedan y charlas con el carcelero, va recordando su vida. Primero, en el Congo belga, con las barbaridades cometidas en nombre del progreso por Leopoldo II y sus agentes. Luego, en la Amazonía peruana, con las no menores atrocidades cometidas por los caucheros con la connivencia de las autoridades. Y, por fin, luchando por la independencia de Irlanda hasta que le condenan por alta traición.

El libro se sostiene porque la vida de Casement es muy interesante por sí misma. También hay que decir que hacía poco tiempo que su nombre había sido rescatado del olvido y que este libro ha contribuido a que conozcamos a este tipo y a los que le rodeaban, algo que siempre merece la pena. Por supuesto, Vargas Llosa escribe bien hasta dormido, eso no es ninguna novedad. Pero, con todo, me he quedado un poco frío. El libro no tiene garra, especialmente en la última parte, donde más parece un informe que una novela. Los personajes apenas evolucionan, salvo el protagonista, y aún a este lo vemos desilusionarse y deprimirse, pero digamos que se nos informa de ello y poco más. En fin, que a ratos incluso me he aburrido y, como digo, solo el interés del tema y el puro oficio del autor sostienen muchas partes de este libro. ( )

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Aquí se cuenta la peripecia vital de un hombre de leyenda: el irlandés Roger Casement. Héroe y villano, traidor y libertario, moral e inmoral, su figura múltiple se apaga y renace tras su muerte.

More notable for moral seriousness than for artistry. The prose (and this could be translation, I suppose) at times reads almost journalistically -- a surprising contrast to my memories of "The Feast of the Goat." There was more dash and snap in a few sentences of Urania's or Trujillo's stream of consciousness than in pages of Casement. Still, and one feels foolish writing this, an important book, a serious book. In this maybe Llosa wants to mirror casement himself -- doing what is right and required, but without excesses of flash or style. Glad I read it, skipped the last 3rd 'Ireland.'

This novel pivots on a beautiful idea, badly executed. Roger Casement is a hero with a dark side: he is betwixt between being a perfect gentleman and lust-driven gay man; being an innocent fighter for justice while consumed by lurid forbidden lusts; being a nascent Irish nationalist and a medalled English Sir and Consul; being a fighter for Ireland and a traitor to England. Casement successfully fought the injustices and cruelties involved in rubber exploration in Leopold’s Congo Free State, first as an itinerant administrator for the Free State in the service of Leopold II and later as British Consul cum investigator; next he is sent as British consul to various Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil) before being asked to perform an investigation into the injustices and cruelties exerted by a British rubber company in Putumayo, Peru. This second investigation takes him back to Congo, but also awakens in him a fierce nationalism for Ireland to be independent and free (or else the Irish will befall the same fate as the indigenous peoples of the Congo and Peru, he fears). So after 1912, when he has successfully published another damning report on the Putumayo scandal, he devotes himself to the cause of Irish nationalism, seeking to raise an Irish army from Irish POWs in Germany, sourcing arms from Germany and seeking to time the rising with a German offensive on the Western front, tying the British army down. Alas, it was not to be. Ferrying in weapons from Germany, Casement is caught before he can halt the spontaneous Easter 1916 rising in Dublin (which is doomed). He spends time in prison waiting for the treatment of an appeal for clemency on his death sentence, talking to a Catholic priest, seeking consolation from Christ, when his private diaries hit the press, and his fate is doomed – the lurid gay exploits (mostly imagined) of Roger condemn him to death and compromise his previous righteous stance as fighter for justice and Irish independence.

Llhosa does seem to stick to the historic facts, interspersing a story line of the despairing Roger in prison on death row, with detailed descriptions of Roger’s trips to Congo, Putumayo (twice) and his nascent Irish nationalism. This seems a successful formula to bring out the struggles of his conscience, but… it becomes too detailed, too repetitive, to the extent that it drags on and on. Pity. A shorter version, with less long winding sentences would probably have become a classic. Not so. ( )