Novel · A way to begin
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
La tía Julia y el escribidor
Mario Vargas Llosa · 1977
Synopsis
In the Lima of the fifties, Varguitas, eighteen, a law student who dreams of writing, composes the news bulletins for a radio station. He falls in love with Julia, a relative by marriage, a divorced woman of thirty-two, and their love has to be hidden from the whole family. At the same radio station arrives from Bolivia Pedro Camacho, a galley slave of the serial, whose episodes, broadcast every other chapter, become more and more extravagant as he runs about ten of them at once.
Context
The novel, the author's seventh, appeared in Barcelona in 1977 with Seix Barral. It draws on the author's first marriage; he had married Julia Urquidi, ten years his senior, in 1955, and divorced in 1964; she later published her own version of events. Helen Lane translated it into English in 1982, and Jon Amiel brought it to the screen in 1990, moving the action to New Orleans.
Who it is for
A long novel in Spanish, funny and fast-paced; the alternation of realist chapters and serials sets the rhythm of the reading.
Prizes and reception
A novel by one of the great figures of the Latin American boom, made into a film in the United States in 1990.