Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010 “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat.” Such images fill the pages and fuel the narratives of his finest novels. The War of the End of the World (1981) was an epic drama set against Brazil’s War of Canudos. The Feast of the Goat (2000) dealt with the life and crimes of the Dominican Republic dictator, Rafael Trujillo. And The Dream of the Celt (2010) followed the Irish nationalist Roger Casement, “a specialist in atrocities,” as he ventured into various arenas of conflict and learned the hard way that “there’s no bloodthirsty animal worse than the human being.”

The writer, who died last April, left us with a final work that tackles markedly different themes. I Give You My Silence sees Vargas Llosa returning to his native Peru and portraying one man’s unique and misguided attempt to capture his country’s spirit and unify hearts and minds. Brute force and political injustice may be in short supply, but the book’s sharp examination of obsession and delusion renders it a satisfying parting shot.