Puyana has said he grew up watching movies and reading comic books, not literary novels. That tracks: His fast-paced novel is full of foreshadowing, cliffhangers and cartoonish thugs. But Puyana entered adulthood as Chávez took power, and this book is really about politics ... Freedom Is a Feast, both a passionate indictment of Chávez and his cronies and a prelude to the present day, is not a hopeless book.
