The Dream of the Celt [Hardcover]

This fictionalised biography of Roger Casement should be one story, as it is the story of one man's life, but strangely it feels like two stories glued together that don't really fit. First there is the story of the man who successfully exposed the cruelty of colonialism in the Congo and in Peru. Especially in the latter episode, where the sheer greed of the (London-based) rubber company fuels a culture of violence and torture against the indigenous workers who harvest the rubber, the theme of corporate responsibility chimes very nicely with today's concerns, and Casement emerges as an undisputed hero. As a dramatic historical development with interesting characters, exotic locations and clear relevance for today's world, this would have made a very nice book on its own, either as a factual or as a fictionalised work.

The other story is Casement's role in the much messier business of Ireland's struggle for independence, culminating in the Easter uprising of 1916. Here he joins the more radical camp of those who don't believe in the promise of autonomy and go for full independence, even if it takes armed conflict to achieve it. Even more controversially, at the beginning of World War I, he tries to forge an alliance with Germany. In the end, however, he wavers and wants to call off the uprising, while a shipload of weapons from Germany is already on its way and cannot be contacted. Under circumstances that are still debated, the arms delivery finds no recipients at the arranged rendez-vous, Casement gets arrested, and the uprising fails. He is sentenced to death, and his appeal is quashed amid the revelation of homosexual adventures detailed in his "black diaries."

Vargas Llosa tells the whole life story in long flashbacks remembered by Casement in his final days in Pentonville prison. On the highly controversial issue of the diaries, he assumes that they are genuinely Casement's writing, but that some of the events recorded are imaginative extrapolations of more innocuous beginnings, rather than precise records of a steamy (and at that time illegal) love life.

I mainly read the book because of the Irish part of the story (because of a family connection), but found that part of the book less engaging than the Congo and Peru story. I wasn't getting much of a sense of place of Ireland, or a sense of why Casement became so obsessively nationalistic. So maybe - memo for anyone who wants to make a film out of this - I might have focused on the colonial locations a bit more, covering only as much of the Irish tragedy as is necessary to explain his fall from grace and ultimate execution.

This is the biographical story of the real Irishman Roger Casement by the noble winning Llosa. I have read all of Llosa's other novels and rate his work very highly indeed particularly liking `War of the end of the world' and `Notebooks of Don Rigoberto'. I enjoy the fictionalisation aspects of his works but often find myself slightly annoyed by not really knowing at the end, fact from fiction.

It is clear from the other reviewers that they know much of Casement and Irish history making observations about accuracy of the book etc; now I have never heard of Roger Casement or his involvement in British colonial or Irish history; so is reading, for me, an educative yet fictionalisation a good idea?

Well this tells the story of an Anglican Irishman (born 1864, baptised secretly into the Catholic faith by his mum) turned diplomat in the period 1870s. He famously visits the Congo (1903) and then the Amazon (1906) detailing on behalf of the British government (he is knighted for his work `a Sir' which later become a difficult label for a republican Irishman) the abuse of indigenous people to deliver latex to the going rubber market by rich, powerful (both locally and nationally) greedy men. The depiction of the sheer torture of the poor workers treated literally worse than slaves is graphic and very thought provoking (whips, starvation, cheating of the quotas, murder, caging, horrific punishments, child killing, town genocide etc) - how anyone responsible could sleep at night was my most constant thought - the only bright-side being that ultimately the international community from Casement's work stop the trade. These periods are framed as retrospectives from prison because Casement is actually now in prison for treason associated with his republican ideal for Ireland; he is awaiting a possible reprieve - even I could see that Casement's engagement with Germany during WW1 to help facilitate a British defeat (through an advance of the Irish Easter Rising) would never get such. Another interesting aspect of the book (which is possibly released at the time to assist his demise) is that it appears that Casement was also gay, fanaticizing over and possibly engaging with, nubile natives etc - this was both challenging at the time in 1910, to himself being religious, and possibly even now depending on the age of blokes.

I really found myself reading the book as a proper biography rather than fiction and enjoyed it as such. One could not really however understand why Casement became so republican - I was expecting some sort of comparison of the treatment of the Irish at a point in their history (such as the Potato famine when basically again rich, powerful greedy men are involved). Admitting my historical ignorance overall here: I did find reference to the `English' parliament slightly irritating; it was not just the English who fought against Turkey in WW1; and to be honest I found myself seething when Llosa allows Casement not to foresee the British "reprisal" in not continuing to pay the Irish families the wages of Irish POWs choosing to effectively join the German side.

So overall I can recommend the book but I can only credit it 3 stars and the main reason I think is that whereas Llosa chooses and enjoyably shows Casement `a human being made of contradictions and contrasts, weakness and greatness, since a man is many men, which means angels and demons combine inextricably in his personality', Llosa did not quite manage to have the same balance for the countries (Ireland, Britain and Belgium, comprising of such `men') involved. Also I think as a fictionalisation it was far too detailed (dates, places, people etc); more fiction around Congo and Brazil with a short finale of his hanging for treason might have worked better for me.

Mario Vargas Llosa's "The Dream of the Celt" is an elegiac and moving fictionalization of the career and death of the troubled Irish Martyr and British traitor Roger Casement.

Casement was born in 1864 in Co Antrim into a Protestant Irish family. He spent most of his career as a loyal and honored - knighted in 1911 - servant of the Crown. He rose to the rank of consul and achieved international fame for his exposés of the atrocities perpetrated in King Leopold's Congo and the Putumaya region in Peru. He was on visiting terms with foreign secretaries and his prominent friends included Yeats, Conrad, Conan Doyle, the sculptor, Herbert Ward, the campaigning journalist E.D. Morel and the historian Alice Stopford Green among many others.

Beneath his official mask, Casement was an ardent Irish nationalist .The seeds of this may have been sown by his parents, both of whom died while he was young: his mother had him secretly baptized as a Roman Catholic while on a visit to Wales; his father, in a down and out phase, flirted with violent nationalism. Eventually, Casement went to Germany - then at war with Great Britain - in an attempt to form an Irish Brigade along the lines that he had witnessed in the Boer War and to persuade the Kaiser to synchronize an invasion of England with an Irish revolt. He failed in both of these objectives but did secure an arms shipment timed to help the Easter Rising of 1916 (which he himself unsuccessfully opposed for logistical reasons). The British intercepted the guns and Casement. He was tried in London, convicted of treason in a surprisingly technical trial and sentenced to hang.

Casement's supporters were optimistic that the British cabinet would commute his sentence. This became impossible, however, when the government leaked excerpts from what became known as his "Black Diaries." These documented a secret life (and financial reckoning) of homosexual cruising, usually involving sex for money, often with "natives" and frequently with minors. This was 21 years after Wilde's downfall and almost two full decades before the Earl of Beauchamp, an acquaintance of Casement, fled in disgrace to the USA, prompting the king to mutter: "I thought that men like that shot themselves." Casement was duly executed and his full acceptance into the pantheon of Irish martyrs was delayed for several decades. For many years there were claims and counterclaims that the diaries were forged. They are now generally judged to be authentic. Vargas LLosa offers the view in his epilogue that they were written by Casement, but that the content is a mixture of fact and fantasy.

Vargas Llosa's "The Dream of the Celt" - the title is taken from Casement's own for a collection of not very good poems based on Irish mythology; Casement himself was hardly a Celt - is a superb and largely historically accurate recreation. From his toolbox of styles, he selects a straightforward narrative approach. The "now" is anchored in Casement's last days in Pentonville Prison with long flashbacks filling in the balance of his life. There are, it must be said, quite a few passages so crammed with facts that they resemble entries in Wikipedia rather than the output of a Nobel laureate, but for the most part the writing is evocative and well translated by Edith Grossman. The passages set in Africa and Peru are the strongest, thick in atmosphere and humanitarian warmth. The Germany and Ireland phases are less well covered - the former is rather superficial and the latter may miss the full conflict of loyalties of a nationalist leaning, non Scots Presbyterian, Protestant Ulsterman of the time.

In presenting Casement - whom he refers to throughout as "Roger," though with a respectful rather than patronizing tone - Vargas LLosa maintains a reverent distance. We observe Casement intimately from above rather than from the inside. Casement himself, in the novel, speaks of his "permanent contradiction." Vargas LLosa does not attempt to explain the complexities and contradictions but builds up his portrait layer by layer. He hints at times that there might be some explanation in Roger's yearning for his lost mother, but for the most part leaves it to the reader to judge.

Casement is portrayed as a man of great physical and moral courage and humanitarian instinct. Even in prison, he is able to show compassion for the sheriff (the correct title for the chief gaoler at Pentonville, though how Casement's lawyer acquired the French title of Maître, I have no idea - it's in the original Spanish as well) who treats him with contempt.

The subject of the Black Diaries is introduced slowly. Casement's visitors gently mention the rumors; he is non-committal, saying only that he has not seen them. Gradually, the flashbacks expand to include his lecherous observations and his actual cruising, "paseo" in the Spanish. Casement recalls these instances but without the shame that might have made other men welcome the gallows. Instead, it is almost as if it were another self at work, part of a complex of compartmentalization that could also allow loyal service to Britain and passionate hatred of the English to co-exist. Casement's execution, when it comes, seems less a punishment or a release, than a natural output of his complex character.

Casement is a perfect subject for Vargas Llosa who is drawn to flawed heroes, and Vargas LLosa is a perfect chronicler for Casement. His book shows that it is possible to be a secular saint (Yeats' "mystic martyr") without being a perfect human being, and that it is possible to respect someone without approving of all or even much of what they have done.

PS: for readers who would like more on Casement, I recommend Jeffrey Dudgeon's "The Black Diaries," published in 2002. This contains a wealth of biographical and contextual research and is written with a wry sense of humor.