The Time of the Hero

The Nobel Prize–winning author’s controversial debut novel exposes the brutal realities of life within a Peruvian military academy.

At the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, Peru, four young cadets have joined forces in an effort to survive the myriad brutalities of their instructors and classmates. But soon this inner circle is pushed to its limits, setting off a chain of events that starts with a theft and leads to murder and suicide.

The Time of the Hero presents, with chilling 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.