Amazing high art adventure kind of a book with some action and intrigue and a piercing look at its wide cast of characters

Nostromo charts the charts the political fortunes of a small fictional South American country, Costaguana, as well as the more personal stories of people caught up in the changes. There's a military dictatorship, a conservative-democratic uprising against it, the rise of imperialist capitalism backed by foreigners, a nationalist revolution against the foreigners (failed), and an attempt at a socialist group to head towards Marxism. The novel is not told in a straightforward manner, but rather one using flashbacks and time jumps, so this list of succession of power feels very different from the novel and not at all like there is necesserily any change or progression by the end. Is the new party in power not going to succumb like all the others before it?

And then of course there is the silver mine, San Tomé, and the people. The history Costaguana and of the people of the novel play out the themes of tensions between moral idealism and the material interests. There is much about the failure and failed ideals. (It's not a very cheery book!) The Goulds have a mining concession near the port city of Sulaco and the belief in economic progress. Nostromo, or Gian' (or Giovanni) Battista Fizanda, has his belief in himself and being needed and so on. It was an interesting read and I'm not sorry to have read it. I'm not sure I always understood the characters very well or really fully grasped what was being implied, but it was interesting.