Vargas Llosa's La Ciudad y los perros and the European Novel of Adolescence

In his paper, "Vargas Llosa's La Ciudad y los perros and the European Novel of Adolescence," John Neubauer investigates Mario Vargas Llosa's 1962 novel about cadets in a military school located just outside of Lima, Peru. The life of a gang (the dogs) in the city and on the premises is described from constantly changing perspectives. Neubauer's article looks at Vargas Llosa's work in terms of features one finds in narratives about adolescents in European literatures around 1900 and where these texts can be read with three main foci found in them. Thematically, the texts focus on the city and urbanity and on the problematics of the concept and workings of peer groups while stylistically the texts show their authors' experimentation with new narrative forms. John Neubauer, "Vargas Llosa's La Ciudad y los perros and the European Novel of Adolescence" page 2 of 5 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 3.2 (2001):