Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of l961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway that will have bloody consequences of its own. In this 'masterpiece of Latin American and world literature, and one of the finest political novels ever written' ("Bookforum"), Mario Vargas Llosa recounts the end of a regime and the birth of a terrible democracy, giving voice to the historical Trujillo and the victims, both innocent and complicit, drawn into his deadly orbit.

马里奥·巴尔加斯·略萨（1936- ）当代文学大师，小说家、戏剧家和批评家，拉丁美洲作家的杰出代表。

出生于秘鲁阿雷基帕。一九五九年，以《首领们》初获文名，一九六二年出版代表作《城市与狗》，又著有《绿房子》、《胡利娅姨妈与作家》、《公羊的节日》等多部小说，以及《塔克纳小姐》、《琼加》和《阳台上的疯子》等戏剧作品，二○○三年又有长篇新作《天堂在另外那个街角》问世。