THE NEW NOVEL FROM THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE A wildly enjoyable book; the 85-year-old Vargas Llosa is as sharp and mordantly funny as ever. Financial Times A compelling and propulsive literary thriller. Hari Kunzru, New York Times Book Review A splendidly rich and absorbing novel. The Scotsman Compelling . . . full of intrigue, backstabbing and shifting power dynamics. Irish Times Guatemala, 1954. A CIA-supported military coup topples the government. Behind this violent act is a lie passed off as truth, which forever changed the development of Latin America: that those in power encouraged the spread of Soviet communism in the Americas. Mario Vargas Llosa has written a drama on a world stage, in which some persecutors end up as victims of the very plot they helped construct. Ironic and sensual, provocative and redemptive, Harsh Times is a story of international conspiracies and conflicting interests in the time of the Cold War, the echoes of which are still felt today.