[Conversation in the Cathedral] (together with [Vargas Llosa's] earlier novels) is a splendid and admirable proof of how three apparently disparate impulses—moral rage, authorial autoindulgence, and severe discipline—can combine into an harmonic whole of shattering power and icy autonomy. Read anything by Mario Vargas Llosa and you will be amazed by the contrast between the heat of the corruptions or perversions narrated and the formal and linguistic frost glittering over them….

The society described [in Conversation] is one of corruption in virtually all the shapes and spheres you can imagine: products and consequences of a dictatorship and the (human) instruments it employs to perpetuate itself. Yet, the language is—with the exception of a few passages that do not ignite—matter-of-fact, almost flat, without pressures of expression, almost casual—even in the most orgiastic and perverse moments!…

[If] you can name it, Conversation has got it...