The Dream of the Celt explores the life of the Irish revolutionary Sir Roger Casement who was executed for treason after his involvement in the 1916 Easter Rising, travelling with its protagonist from Liverpool and Dublin to the Congo and Peru, where Casement worked as a British consul, and to London, where he ended his life in Pentonville jail.

With its preoccupation with political issues and its international scope The Dream of the Celt sits firmly in the tradition of the greatest of Vargas Llosa's work.