When the republican-government officials of Brazil, however, learn that money is no longer being used at Canudos, they foolishly suspect that this is a monarchist plot that is merely using the people at Canudos as pawns furthermore, this myopia-which utterly ignores the religious basis of the very Christian experiment there-is compounded by the hysterical influence of an important newspaper publisher. The Counselor's followers in Canudos are both poor peasantry and societal dregs-bandits, circus geeks, failures, whores-but his manifest saintliness harmonizes them. And though much of this novel is surprisingly drab and flat, the extraordinarily punishing, unremitting scenes of battle and carnage bring the book's lesson home all too vividly: the madness that can horribly grow out of any small fanaticism and power-base.
With few of the sly narrative flourishes that distinguish most of his fiction, Vargas Llosa now offers a vast historical novel tightly focused on an 1890s rebellion in the Bahia state of Brazil-by followers (called jagunÇos) of an apocalyptic religious figure, dubbed "The Counselor," in the little town of Canudos.
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