The work of the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa … has established him as a major figure in contemporary Latin American letters. His new book [The War of the End of the World] should confirm this: even in translation it overshadows the majority of novels published here in the past few years. Indeed, it makes most recent American fiction seem very small, very private, very gray, and very timid.

The War of the End of the World is based on a true incident that occurred in Brazil in the final years of the 19th century. Slavery had been abolished in 1888, and a republic succeeded the monarchy in 1889. Four years later, in a desolate part of the northern state of Bahia, a charismatic religious leader established a peasant community that shared his belief in the imminent end of the world and his radical rejection of the secular state. This community...