topics: |  fiction | peru | latin-america | translation

When sexy, sophisticated, older Aunt Julia gets divorced from her Bolivian
husband, she heads home to Peru in search of a new mate who can support her
in high style. She finds instead her libidinous nephew Varguitas - a young,
impoverished law student who works at a ramshackle radio station and aspires
to be a fiction writer. Will their love survive the horror of the family? The
shock of the community? The considerable difference in their ages? Meanwhile,
a new, hotshot scriptwriter of racy radio soap operas, who turns out stories
filled with murder, incest, rape, and perversion, has all of Peru listening
in. Reality merges with fantasy as Mario Vargas Llosa juggles a madcap cast
of characters and carouses through a world of forbidden passion, in a novel
"The New York Times Book Review" named one of the twelve best of 1982.