La ciudad y los perros
(Book)

Originally published in 1963, La ciudad y los perros (English: The time of the hero) is the first novel by Peruvian writer and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature Mario Vargas Llosa. Set among a community of cadets in a Lima military school (the Leoncio Prado Military Academy), it is notable for its experimental and complex employment of multiple perspectives. The protagonists of the novel, a group of young people who are "educated" in a ruthless and violent military discipline, learn to survive in an environment where they are entrenched in racial prejudices and differences between social and economic classes, where things are shown as they really are and breaking the rules seems to be the only way out. This 50th anniversary edition includes essays by Marco Martos, José Miguel Oviedo, Víctor García de la Concha, Darío Villanueva, Javier Cercas, Carlos Garayar, John King, and Efraín Kristal.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 559-576) and index.

Relata las crueldades cometidas por un grupo de alumnos de educación secundaria en el Colegio Militar Leoncio Prado. Es una crítica a la educación castrense y al concepto erróneo de la virilidad.

At a military academy in Peru in which savage initiation ceremonies, lewdness, and bullying take place, one of the most put-upon cadets is thought to have revealed the name of a perpetrator of a minor crime and is shot during maneuvers.