The Boy in the Wake and Other Liars
A novel whose central event is the death of a cadet, Mario Vargas Llosa’s La ciudad y los perros strikes at the heart of authoritarian corruption. A more radical reading does not simply accept as true The Jaguar’s confession that he was the murderer. The three main cadet characters – The Poet, The Slave, The Jaguar – are all liars by nurture. The environment fostered by the Academy is a form of corruption in which survival as some made-up self forecloses all grounds for authenticity.