The Master of Fate

This is a coming of age novel of a different sort. It is not about the building of character but about its erosion. It is not about the traumatic experiences that the protagonist must learn from as a part of growing up, but about the accumulation of small events and pressures that result in the unravelling of a life. Oscar grows up in Bogata, Columbia, a youth of intellect and ambition from a middle-class family. But social corruption, most notably the anti-Semitism that even the 'best people' accept as a fact of life, and political and economic corruption, shown in part by the portrayal of the machinations in the system of higher education, through their affects on Oscar and his family act to thwart his ambition and turn his intellect in upon itself. Both existential and realistic, The Master of Fate is reminiscent of Sarte's early post-war stories.