Summary
Mario Vargas Llosa: Pantaleon and the Visitors
Pantaleon Pantohi has recently been promoted to captain of the army. As a soldier who has never shirked his duty, he receives a confidential mission - to establish a secret service of prostitutes for the armed forces of Peru. The visitor service was opened in the city of Iquitos, a city located in the heart of the jungle and to which no land road leads, to prevent the rape of peasant women and minors. Rather, its perfect organization threatens the very scheme of the Service.
Mario Vargas Llosa uses this theme to highlight the hypocrisy of exemplary institutions (the army and the church) and the oldest professions in the world. The eternal discussion between truth and lies, necessity and virtue, and the disastrous consequences of rigorously respected duties are the basic themes of this satirical novel.
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