This novel is based on the extraordinary real-life story of Rodrigo Rosenberg, a prominent Guatemalan lawyer who, in 2009, arranged his own assassination after recording a video in which he accused Guatemala’s president, Alvaro Colom, of responsibility for his impending murder.
Through this gripping and bizarre story, Unger paints a vivid picture of Guatemalan society—scarred by violence and criminal gangs, corruption, glaring inequality, poor governance, and the longstanding discrimination and suppression of the country’s indigenous people.
The protagonist, Guillermo Rosensweig, is a successful lawyer who gradually ruins his life and hurts his family through his insatiable sexual appetite and numerous affairs. After his family leaves him and his lover is murdered, he sinks into depression and alcoholism. A crooked fixer proposes an extraordinary solution: Rosensweig should arrange his own death and leave behind a video blaming the president for his murder and, more broadly, for the problems afflicting both himself and Guatemala.
An assassin is hired to carry out the elaborate suicide scheme. But the plan goes wrong: the killer shoots the wrong man, and Rosensweig survives. He then escapes to neighbouring El Salvador.
His reflections after crossing the border provide an interesting comparison between Guatemala and El Salvador:
“While Guatemala prides itself on being the beautiful queen of Central America, its smugness is a bit dated, like that of an English dowager... In Guatemala City, the armed conflict was abstract because it mostly took place in a countryside only the Indians thought to inhabit. Here in San Salvador, the craterous wounds of the conflict are visible and palpable, and this makes the citizens more honest, unwilling to hide behind any sort of delusion or distortion.”
The Mastermind* is therefore more than the story of one man's crazy self-destruction. It is also a dark and revealing portrait of Guatemala—a country struggling with the legacies of civil war, entrenched inequality, racial divisions, violence and dysfunctional institutions. Unger combines political commentary with black humour in weaving the story in a poignant way
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