The Time of the Hero
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 1966
Place of publication: New York (New York), USA
Language: eng; spa
Translated from: spa
Translation of: La ciudad y los perros
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 409
Description: "The scene: a pitch-black lavatory after lights-out at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, Peru. Four cadets are drawing lots for the night's mission. Their objective: the captain's office. Their target: to steal a copy of the next day's chemistry examination. In this microcosm, this city within a city, a group of cadets form still another circle in their attempt to break out of the vicious round of sadistic hazing, military discipline, confinement, and boredom. The cadets' rebellion is led by the Jaguar, an aloof, tough boy who refuses to be initiated and treated as one of the Dogs. Under his leadership seven cadets, later reduced to four, join forces to fight the system by smuggling in pisco and cigarettes, running midnight poker games in the latrine, selling answers to examinations, stealing or mutilating uniforms. The Poet, regarded as the class brain, writes and sells pornographic stories; the Boa, their sex hero, wins the contests they hold in their hide-out; and the Slave is their built-in scapegoat. But what began as pranks in their First Year turns into tragedy by the time the boys reach the Third Year -- the point at which the novel opens. The officers' discovery of the theft of a crucial final exam sets off a cycle of betrayal, murder, and revenge which jeopardizes the entire military hierarchy. Moving back and forth from past to present, from inner thought to outer action, from within the Academy to the city outside, Vargas LLosa exposes the sordid world of the military elite, with its hypocrisy, moral decay, and power politics, and the corruption throughout the society beyond the Academy walls." --
Notes: Translation of La ciudad y los perros.

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