Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973) (orig. Spanish Pantaleón y las visitadoras) is a relatively short comedic novel by acclaimed Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa.
The story takes place in the Peruvian department of Amazonas, where troops from the Peruvian Army are attended to by sex workers, referred to euphemistically in the Spanish juridical term visitador, meaning “auditors”, "inspectors" or "examiners".
According to the author himself, the work is based on facts, as he was able to verify them in 1958 and in 1962 when he travelled to the Peruvian jungle. It deals with Captain Pantoja's (from whom the novel’s title takes its name) astonishing efficiency campaign to provide prostitution services for quelling the sexual desires of the Peruvian army soldiers stationed in what is portrayed as an incredibly aphrodisiacal Amazon jungle.
Read more about Captain Pantoja And The Special Service: Plot, Novel Characters, Film Adaptations
Famous quotes containing the words captain, special and/or service:
“We are taking the Nautilus down for the last time.”
—Earl Felton, and Richard Fleischer. Captain Nemo (James Mason)
“Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“Finally, your lengthy service ended,
Lay your weariness beneath my laurel tree.”
—Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (65–8)