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Fantastic! Fan-tastic! "Conversation in the Cathedral" was definitely a big work of art, a real masterpiece. It was the first book by Llosa that I read (after a suggestion by my friend, Moeen) and I'm now eager to read some more of his. It was none of a magic realism but yet a pure South-American way of story telling, with so many "stories" happening.
The book starts when Santiago Zavala, journalist, meets with his rich father's former chauffeur, Ambrosio, and they go to the bar "Cathedral" to have some beer and talk. They talk about their pasts and remember different stories from the very old times till the present. The whole book (about 700 pages) is the stories these two old fellas remember and retell.
Apart from the great tales Llosa has put in his characters' mouths and brains, "Conversation in the Cathedral" is a big achievement in story telling. As the two get drunk, they start mixing things up. The result is that almost everywhere in the book, we have parallel stories, all being narrated at the same time. Specially at the time when the pals are most drunken, there are chapters in which four stories are being told simultaneously, in a way that each sentence belongs to one of them, and these sentences are not put in any specific order. Actually, there are times that you should decide that the sentence you are reading belongs to one story or the other. It seems even that the author gets drunk with his characters too, since from time to time he starts telling tales about places in which none of the fells were present. This parallel story telling is kept throughout the book, though it changes the style, i.e. when the guys regain a part of their consciousness, they continue telling their stories in turns, and in bigger slices: two pages each turn.
Llosa's great style of writing has made this book a brilliant oeuvre of literature, a big "must read" for novel lovers and a real "coursebook" for whoever wants to write anything literal one day. He has made a great source of joy and surprise, which I doubt that will ever get outdated.

P.S: I should thank God for giving us Abdollah Kosari! I read his translation of the book, and I should confess that it was a very great one, letting me devour the novel wholeheartedly and confidently.