Published in 1981, La guerra del fin del mundo [The War of the End of the World] is in many regards the central work of Vargas Llosa's oeuvre. The novel shows important continuities of motif and technique with the works published so far, but combines them with major new concerns that have evolved out of Vargas Llosa's intellectual, artistic and political development during the 1970s, concerns which will remain important in all of his later fiction. The ‘demons’ that have shaped his writing since the beginning of his career are present in La guerra in the form of religion and the military, the two main antagonistic forces in the war between a millenarian movement and the newly established republic in late nineteenth-century Brazil; journalism and the question of truth and lies in writing once more play an important part in this novel; and the relationship between idealism and fanaticism, a developing theme in the early work, becomes a central issue in La guerra. As in other works, the novel's structure supports its meaning: a system of parallels and contrasts plays a vital role in illustrating the similarity between opponents in the conflict at the centre of La guerra. Important narrative devices further underpin this interplay between form and meaning: perspectivization through multiple points of view becomes the crucial technique to emphasize mutual misunderstandings between all sides involved.