The Discreet Hero

Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa released his novel The Discreet Hero (El héroe discreto) in 2013. Edith Grossman's English translation was later published in 2015. Set in Peru, the novel takes several characters that have previously appeared in Vargas Llosa’s fiction and embroils them in a complex plot that follows two parallel stories of Peruvian businessmen to a conclusion in which their lives intersect. At the heart of the narrative are relationships between fathers and ungrateful sons, and the ways in which filial piety is affected by the rising affluence that Peru’s economic development brings about. The novel considers the differences between self-made and inherited wealth, and the ways easy access to material comforts leads to greed.

The novel is written in several periods, shifting between flashbacks and points of view, and interweaving the two main plots. For the sake of clarity, this summary will instead describe events chronologically and address each of the main characters’ stories in turn.

One half of the novel takes place in the small northern desert city of Piura. The city is provincial enough that even in the midst of its economic revival, a visitor is surprised that there are movie theaters and cafes there. The working-class Felicito Yanaque is a truly self-made man who has grown a successful trucking business after growing up in poverty. Part of his success has come from his abiding love for his now-dead father, who warned Felicito to “Never let anybody walk all over you, son.”

Now in late middle age, the short and unprepossessing Felicito is in a stable but loveless marriage to Gertruidis and has two sons who work in the business alongside him. The younger son is a model of good behavior, but the older son, Miguel, has always been a troublemaker; Felicito harbors some suspicions that the young man isn’t biologically his. Felicito also has a mistress, Mabel, who is thirty years younger than him. Felicito gives Mabel an allowance and has set her up in an apartment.

The novel opens with Felicito in a state of stress when he discovers an extortion letter pinned to the door of his business. It demands protection money, or else, and is signed with a drawing of a spider. When Felicito tries to get the police to help, they mostly don’t take him seriously and tell him to just hand over the not particularly large sum the extortionists are demanding. Many of his acquaintances give him the same advice. However, Felicito remembers the words of his father and refuses to be bullied. Instead, he buys an ad in the paper proclaiming his defiant refusal to pay up. The ad makes him a reluctant public hero and impresses police officer Lituma enough that he offers to help Felicito find and deal with the extortionists. In response, the extortionists burn down his business. When even this doesn’t shake Felicito’s resolve, Mabel is kidnapped.

Although the identity of the extortionists is set up as a mystery, it is clear the situation is not all it seems when it is revealed that Mabel is also in a sexual relationship with Miguel.

Meanwhile, in Peru’s capital city of Lima, we follow the adventures of Don Rigoberto, a successful accountant, who has also been featured in Vargas Llosa’s other works. As Rigoberto nears his retirement and its accompanying trip to Europe, his close friend and sometime employer, Ismael Carrera asks him for help.

Ismael, who is in his seventies, runs a very successful insurance company. However, the job is stressful enough to induce a heart attack, and as he lies recovering in the hospital, Ismael overhears his spoiled twin sons gleefully anticipating his death and the financial windfall they will receive afterward. The boys are horrible in every way – their nickname is “the hyenas” – and their main concerns in life are parties, sexual escapades, and conspicuous consumption. An infuriated Ismael finally decides to live his best life and make sure that neither son inherits his fortune.

After getting out of the hospital, Ismael finally proposes marriage to his housekeeper Armida, a working-class woman from Piura who is forty years his junior. She accepts, and they seem genuinely in love with one another. Nevertheless, to avoid the twins’ wrath, Ismael and Armida marry in secret, with only Rigoberto as a witness to the wedding. Afterward, the happy couple takes off to Europe on their honeymoon, leaving Rigoberto to bear the brunt of the reaction of “the hyenas.”

The twins immediately accuse Rigoberto of being in league with Armida to defraud their father of his fortune. When this tack fails, they go for all-out war, complete with threats of bodily harm and the involvement of the press. Waylaid by reporters, Rigoberto must postpone his retirement trip in the face of the chaos.

But Rigoberto isn’t only involved in Ismael’s mess – he is also dealing with problems closer to home. His own teenage son Fonchito is being followed by a deeply menacing stranger named Edilberto Torres. This dapper adult man seems to come out of nowhere whenever Fonchito is alone to talk to him. The situation is scary and confusing – is the man a danger, like a pedophile or a kidnapper? Is he a delusion or a lie that Fonchito is telling to get attention? Rigoberto isn’t sure what to think, and there are quite a few suggestions that Edilberto might well be supernatural – a ghost, or a demon, or even some kind of manifestation of the country’s dark history.

We learn that Ismael’s new wife, Armida and Felicito’s longsuffering Gertruidis are sisters. This is revealed when a newly refined Armida – whose European trip has been a crash course in upper-crust manners – goes to Gertruidis’s house to escape from the twins. This visit ties the two plot threads together and leads to the novel’s resolution. As reporters mob both Rigoberto and Felicito, Gertruidis becomes instrumental in unraveling the identities of Felicito’s extortionists: Mabel and Miguel. Felicito reacts with a brutality that surprises even the police officer who has been helping him, and realizes that he has been deeply unfair in his treatment of his wife. Meanwhile, the twins’ attempts to annul their father’s marriage fall through, and Armida anticipates a happy life with Ismael.