A difficult time

A novel of a difficult time by Mario Vargas Llosa .... "A Difficult Time" / Mario Vargas Llosa "Does history lie in distorting reality? Does history lie in transforming specific facts into legends and fantasies? Is it the history we read and study? The heroes we admire?" Llosa reviews in his novel the history of the President of Guatemala; Jacobo Árbenz, whom he describes as "seeking to implement reforms that everyone considered vital at that time, but he was overthrown by a military coup led by Carlos Castillo Armas, who in turn fell victim to a mysterious assassination whose details and perpetrators are unknown, and today it is suspected that the dictator of the Dominican Republic, Trujillo, was behind it." About the birth of the idea of the novel; Vargas Llosa says he was having dinner two and a half years ago in the Dominican capital Santo Domingo with some friends "...and as I was preparing to leave the restaurant, a man approached me and said: I have a story I want you to hear so you can write it. That man was unaware that I never include in my writings what I am asked to include, but he insisted on telling that story, which captured my interest, and I then spent the past two years tirelessly working on writing it."