[The appearance of military characters] is reiterated with insistence [in the novels of Vargas Llosa], almost in a manic way; they operate by means of saturation and concentration in narrative texts which, on the other hand, appear crammed full of characters, filled to the brim with entire human populations. Among that mass, however, the military stand out with an unmistakable brilliance which is not just that of their uniforms: they are there to tell us something, a great deal, about the author, his imaginary world, the key notions to his intellectual conduct. (p. 16)

What can explain this … seduction by the military and their hierarchies? Why do they captivate the author's imagination? What role do they play in the text and context of his works? In the first place, the world of the military appears to be ruled by the principle of rigor: military structure is a closed structure...