404 pages
English language
Published July 15, 2012 by Faber.
As The Dream of the Celt opens, it is the summer of 1916 and Roger Casement awaits the hangman in London's Pentonville Prison. Dublin lies in ruins after the disastrous Easter Rising led by his comrades of the Irish Volunteers. He has been caught after landing from a German submarine. For the past year he has attempted to raise an Irish brigade from prisoners of war to fight alongside the Germans against the British Empire that awarded him a knighthood only a few years before. And now his petition for clemency is threatened by the leaking of his private diary and his secret life as a gay man ...
A beautiful and magnificently researched saga of the life of Roger Casement, told as a semi-fictional narrative with an engaging and engrossing tone. The story and characters live through Llosa's writing. The first section is a little bogged in historical detail, but worth persevering.
