Description

This novel follows two lives side by side. One belongs to Flora Tristán, who wears herself out fighting for the rights of women and workers. The other belongs to Paul Gauguin, her grandson on his mother's side. He finds his passion for painting and leaves his middle-class life behind. He moves to Tahiti to look for a world free of Western rules.

The book asks where paradise might be found. Is it in a fair and equal society that people must build? Or is it in a return to the values of a simpler, older world? Flora and Gauguin give opposite answers.

They also see sex in opposite ways. Flora sees it as a tool men use to rule women, though she has a brief affair with a woman. Gauguin feels it as a vital force that feeds his art. Once, this includes an encounter with a man.

Mario Vargas Llosa tells the two stories as parallel chronicles. Through them he paints the world of nineteenth-century utopias. He traces each hero's dream of paradise in detail. He also shows their fall, which comes when an idea is applied too rigidly.

This Romanian edition is the third, and it appears in a series devoted to the author's work.