Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 1982. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374106916. Translated from the Spanish by Helen R. Lane. 374 pages. hardcover. Jacket design (c) 1982 by Tom Christopher. Jacket photograph (c) 1982 by Alicia Benavides.
DESCRIPTION - Mario Vargas Llosa has long been acknowledged as one of Latin America’s most important writers. A novelist of wide-ranging concerns, Vargas Llosa has, with AUNT JULIA AND THE SCRIPTWRITER, written his comic masterpiece-a ribald, sophisticated tale of life and love in Lima of the 1950s. In AUNT JULIA AND THE SCRIPTWRITER he tells, in fact, two stories which unfold contrapuntally. On one level, the book concerns young Mario, who, while working at a second-rate Lima radio station, becomes romantically involved with Julia, his divorced, thirty-two-year-old aunt. The development of their liaison-from fling to romance to marriage-and the scandal it creates is the keenly observed, witty main plot. Interwoven with this love affair is the tale of Pedro Camacho, Mario’s friend at the radio station, and the resident scriptwriter of outlandish soap operas which are the hit of Lima. This second story is equally funny, but the humor is darker and the conclusion serious indeed. Camacho’s plots become more and more convoluted, and his absorption in them so total that soon he dresses like his characters in order to write, and finally confuses them so completely that he must destroy them all. His Gothic tales of ruin become a parable of his own rum. AUNT JULIA AND THE SCRIPTWRITER is a wonderful, deft story which is also an account of storytelling-its pleasures and its dangers. Combining grace, humor, and an understated seriousness, the book is a brilliantly realized tour de force.
The Avon Bard edition:
Vargas Llosa, Mario. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. New York. 1983. Avon/Bard. 0380637278. Translated from the Spanish by Helen R. Lane. 374 pages. paperback. Front cover illustration by Victor Gadino.
FROM THE PUBLISHER -
‘FUNNY, EXTRAVAGANT . . . A WONDERFULLY COMIC NOVEL ALMOST UNBELIEVABLY RICH IN CHARACTER, PLACE AND EVENT.’ - LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW . . . ‘Me, seducing a kid? Never!’ Rich, sexy Aunt Julia wants a new husband, not a boy. But her nephew lost his virginity five whole years ago, and has now lost his head over Aunt Julia. Roses, kissing, cooing . . . will this May-September scandal ever get down to serious improprieties? Can the nephew hope for help from his hero, a crack scriptwriter of superheated soaps? While legions of soap addicts hang on the scriptwriter’s frenzied episodes of incest, murder, rape and perversion, the lovers’ happiness hangs in the balance. ‘WILL READERS TURN THE PAGES TO FIND OUT WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT? YES: ’ - PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER ‘UPROARIOUS ENTERTAINMENT . . . FOR SHEER WIT, IMAGINATION AND HIGH STYLE, THIS SOAP OPERA OF LOVE CANT BE BEAT: ’ - CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR . . . ‘ONE OF THE TWELVE ‘BEST NOVELS OF 1982’ – THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.
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And for a slightly different perspective:
Urquidi Illanes, Julia. My Life With Mario Vargas Llosa . New York. 1988. Peter Lang. 0820406899. Translated from the Spanish by C. R. Perricone. Series XXII Latin American Studies Vol.1. 264 pages. hardcover.
FROM THE PUBLISHER -
Living in a Paris garret with a struggling young writer who has since become a famous author was not fictional for Julia Urquidi Illanes when she married Mario Vargas Llosa. This English translation is an incredible but true 'portrait of an artist as a young man' and of his aunt by marriage, whom he later fictionalized in Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. Married for 9 years, Julia typed the first of his best-selling novels, The Time of the Hero, only to be abandoned when Mario fell in love with his first cousin Patricia, who is now his second wife. Readers will find this behind the scene account of a writer nominated for the Nobel prize gives insights into the creative processes of a novelist as it relates the range of human emotions in real life. 
Julia Urquidi Illanes (30 May 1926 - 10 March 2010) was a Bolivian writer. Urquidi was born in Cochabamba. She was famous as the first wife of Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa (1955-1964) and also the namesake of one of his most famous novels, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. In 1983 she published her memories titled Lo que Varguitas no dijo (English: What Varguitas did not say). She died in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, aged 83.The English translator Catherine R. Perricone is Professor of Foreign Languages at Auburn University specializing in current Spanish American literature. She edited Alma y Corazon (Heart and Soul) an anthology of Latin American poetesses, and has published articles on Vargas Llosa and other novelists, an extensive bibliography on feminist criticism and Spanish American poetesses, and other subjects in Hispanic literature which have appeared in such journals as Hispania, Foreign Language Annals, Circulo, USF Language Quarterly, and The Americas Review.
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