Mario Vargas Llosa uses a cadet school in Peru to explore the appalling interplay of cause and effect, reward and punishment, in a corrupt society.
'The Jaguar' is tough, a teenage veteran of the Lima underworld; Alberto, 'The Poet',is emotional and improvident, unhinged by his bickering parents; Arana,'The Slave', a misfit from a rich family, who is driven by victimization to 'squeal' on his chief oppressor-an action which proves potentially disastrous for many others and fatal for himself. But no one faces up to the truth behind the tragedy...except Lieutenant Gamboa, duly crushed by the pressures of expediency.
The time of the Hero presents, with great accuracy and power, the cadets' nightmare life: brutal initiation rites, poker in the latrines, inter-intake rivalry; and, above all, the strange military code, which, whether broken or followed, can only destroy...