The Time of the Hero

The Time of the Hero (Original title: La ciudad y los perros, literally "The City and the Dogs") is a 1963 novel by Peruvian writer and Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa. It was Vargas Llosa's first novel and is set among the cadets at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, which he attended as a teenager. The novel portrays the school so scathingly that its leadership burned many copies and condemned the book as Ecuadorian propaganda against Peru. It won the 1962 Premio Biblioteca Breve for best unpublished novel and the 1963 Premio de la Crítica Española. Style and themes The novel is notable for its experimental and complex employment of multiple perspectives in a non-linear fashion. A technique influenced by William Faulkner and particularly the novel Light in August. It is a story about adolescence and young males transition to manhood, but is also described to portray a microcosm of the Peruvian society. It features themes such as masculinity, hierarchy, secrecy and the military.