I finished reading this book today, and i liked it very much. It tell's the story of a group of teenagers that attend a military college in Peru, called Colégio Militar Leoncio Prado (Leoncio Prado Military College, in english), describing their youth, their experiences in the college and their life's outside the college. The crushes on girls, the love relationships, the family problemas, the economical problems they went and that they go threw, the abuses inside the college, the violence, the abuse of power, the bullying... everything, from the most powerful and shocking event of their life's, to the most childish and funny episodes.

At the end, it's a book about power, authority and conventions (social conventions, or institutional conventions). It's a story about resilience, loyalty, love and self superation, about someone being able to overcome his own limits. And it's also a portray of the Peru of that time: the economical conditions, the difficulties that most people were going threw, the military conflits that Peru faced at the time.

I recomend it to everyone, it's a very good book. That, be warned, Llosa's writing is very peculiar.