Killing the Mandarin [Hardcover]

Juan Alonso (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 19, 1998

Part political thriller, part treatise on the fragility of human interaction, this fine novel from the Argentinean-born Alonso offers a penetrating look into the struggle against oppression, both political and personal....with a smart, conversational narrative, Alonso presents an intriguing examination of a revolution's smaller stories. Swift and engaging right to the last. --Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this adventurous novel of ideas, Argentina-born Alonso (Althea) explores the question of whether political violence is ever justified, and whether it can achieve its desired ends. In 1969, Jack, teaching American literature on a Fulbright in Montevideo, Uruguay, awaits the arrival of his pen pal, Rebecca Wasser. Twenty years earlier, when he was 14 and Rebecca 12, they spent three days in sexual foreplay on a steamship heading home to the U.S. from China. Now Rebecca, unhappily married to "a twisted, sardonic, mediocre crud," is monitoring a fossil hunt in Argentina. She and Jack embark on a brief affair, but, meanwhile, she falls secretly in love with Jack's graduate student Colin Costello, a leftist of Irish descent who detests the British and rails at U.S. imperialism. Homophobic Colin, who is clandestinely involved with Uruguay's communist Tupamero guerrillas, confides in Jack that he has been sodomized with a nightstick by a Buenos Aires cop who mistook him for a homosexual. Complicating the picture is Lucien Maures, a gay, shaven-headed French anthropologist who seems modeled at least in part on Michel Foucault. Jack, a self-described "humanist liberal" who parries the verbal assaults of foes on both left and right, gives this inventive novel its intellectual center as his creator takes risks?including an ending that embraces ambiguity?that more conventional novelists would never attempt.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Everything is hot and slow in Montevideo. Lives never seem to get going. Servant girls dance the tango in the street and dream of freedom. Men talk in cafes about revolution. Montevideo tries to be Buenos Aires. Killing the Mandarin is a story full of lives like these, still as summer air and heavy with possibility. Jack is a Fulbright scholar teaching American history in late-1960s Montevideo. Tired of his languid existence, he strikes up a friendship with an Anglo-Argentinian student with revolutionary and disturbing ideas for the "new world" of South America. Then Jack's childhood sweetheart, who has corresponded with him for nearly 20 years, requests a rendezvous. It is a pivotal event for Jack, who begins to place all hope in the possibility that their youthful love will rekindle and transform his aimlessness. This trio develops a chemistry that stirs each to act but with tragic consequences. Jack narrates his story in meandering sentences, streams of words rather than stream of consciousness. But the verbosity is intelligent, subtle, and effective. Jack unwittingly amplifies a doomed moment in Latin American history when the inability to act--even the smallest amount of inertia--could have the largest repercussions. Deanne Larson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: New Amsterdam Books (May 19, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156131062X
• ISBN-13: 978-1561310623
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,860,652 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exciting and politically astute novel, February 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Killing the Mandarin (Hardcover)

Juan Alonso is an Ameican original. This is his best and most accessible book. Read it and discover him for yourself.

5.0 out of 5 stars Should we kill the Mandarin?, December 2, 2010

By 

Ragdoll - See all my reviews

This review is from: Killing the Mandarin (Paperback)

Killing the Mandarin is a complex tapestry of a novel. It takes place in the oppressive heat of Montevevideo in 1969. Alonso weaves strands of decadence, political intrigue, and romance into the story of a revolution. In this rich narrative he poses the question of whether the ends (however socially redeeming) ever justify the means. I was swept up in pondering this eternal question. Well worth the read.
Ragdoll

5.0 out of 5 stars In great condition and arrived in timely fashion., May 9, 2007

By 

Ana Maria Vallarino (Palos Verdes Estates, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Killing the Mandarin (Paperback)

In great condition and arrived in timely fashion.