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Product Description
Product Description
The action of The Time of the Hero, Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa’s first novel, takes place at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, Peru. There, four angry cadets who have formed an inner circle in an attempt to ward off the boredom and stifling confinement of the military academy set off a chain of events that starts with a theft and leads to murder and suicide. The Time of the Hero presents, with great accuracy and power, the cadets’ nightmare life: brutal initiation rights, poker in the latrines, drinking contests; and, above all else, the strange military code which, whether broken or followed, can only destroy.
When The Time of the Hero was first published in Peru in 1962, it was considered so scandalous that a thousand copies were burned in an official ceremony at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy. That same year, the book received the Biblioteca Breve Prize, an award given to the best work of fiction in the Spanish language.
About the Author
Mario Vargas Llosa is Peru's foremost author and the winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1994 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor, and in 1995 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His many distinguished works include The Storyteller, The Feast of the Goat, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Death in the Andes, In Praise of the Stepmother, The Bad Girl, Conversation in the Cathedral, The Way to Paradise, and The War of the End of the World. He lives in London.
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Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.9 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic - in a Vargas Llosa kind of way, Aug 7 1997
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Time Of The Hero (Paperback)
I rate this book 10, because it embodies in one text a story so powerful from a personal and political point of view. The story deals with a group of army cadets in Lima, their pasts and their presents, and what will potentially be a future shaped for them by the serious injury of one of their troop while on army manouvers.The story that unfolds from this, interwoven with the power struggle that goes on between the forces of good and humanity and evil faceless silence of the army leaves you breathless. Not everyone will appreciate this book, but there are those out there that owe it to themselves to read this book and learn. Not just about peruvians themselves, but the deep forces of power, ruthlessness and betrayal that power the human race itself
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Coming of age in the military, Oct 24 2005
By Ian Muldoon - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Time Of The Hero (Paperback)
A novel which provides shifting perspectives and which moves back and forth in time and which moves easily from third to first person and in so doing manages to accumulate an engrossing look at adolescents and their experiences in the military. But it also manages to show the side of the officers in charge with intelligence and understanding. A major theme is the individual conscience in collision with the institution, and the individual faced with the imperatives of the group. The cadet training institution is a dumping ground for adolescents who are fed, clothed and "disciplined" and the novel examines their experiences especially ways in which they manage to create their own society within the structure much as in prisons. THe novel is especially strong in depicting the idealism of youth and their groping towards first love. Although cynical at times - rules are for subordinates not superiors one Lt is told (p382) it does end with an overall feeling of hope. A Mosaic of life in Peru in the 1950's which might be paralleled in many other cultures.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not my Favorite Novel by Vargas Llosa, but Interesting..., Sep 13 2009
By Lauren Mitchell - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Time Of The Hero (Paperback)
I've now read several of Vargas Llosa's novels and I am a HUGE fan, actually, but this particular novel didn't strike me in quite the same way. It is an earlier novel than most of the others that I have read by him--this is a schoolboy/military academy novel that Vargas Llosa wrote during the Latin American Boom in Literature. Imagine "A Separate Peace" set in a Latin American Military Academy, in fact. (Except that it is also written in the less traditional, non-chronological narrative format favored by many of the Boom writers, who were all admirers of Modernists such as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and William Faulkner.)There really isn't any particular reason that I can pinpoint that I enjoyed it somewhat less than the other novels that I have read by Vargas Llosa--and I would recommend it to other readers. The way that the non-chronological narrative veils certain things about the story might frustrate some readers, but others might find that very element of the novel to be an intriguing selling point. Especially if you're interested in Vargas Llosa, the Latin American Boom, or Latin American literature in general, this is a must read, despite my own personal preference for some of his other novels.
(I would highly recommend "Death in the Andes," "The Storyteller" and "The Feast of the Goat," all by Vargas Llosa, as well as "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.)
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