Description

Captain Pantaleon Pantoja is a careful, hard-working army officer. His country gives him a strange new job. He must set up a service of prostitutes for the troops. The mission is official, but it must stay secret. If word got out, it would ruin everything, even his marriage.

The army sends him to a small, remote town in the Amazon jungle. The town is in turmoil. Soldiers attack the local women. An odd preacher leads people to crucify insects and hens, and then almost any living thing. More babies are born, the orphanages fill up, and people start to die as sacrifices. Pantaleon has to sort out this mess.

His earlier tasks changed him each time. Planning food rations gave him a huge hunger and a passion for cooking. Running the uniform stores turned him into a military fashion designer. So the reader can guess what this new post will do to him.

Mario Vargas Llosa wrote this lively tragicomedy as a satire. It mocks both religious and military fanaticism. The novel inspired two films, made between 1973 and 2000. The author helped direct the first one. This Romanian edition belongs to a series devoted to the author's work.