{"product_id":"aunt-julia-and-the-scriptwriter-by-mario-vargas-llosa","title":"'Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter' by Mario Vargas Llosa","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"391\" data-end=\"799\"\u003eSet in 1950s Lima, \u003cem data-start=\"410\" data-end=\"443\"\u003eAunt Julia and the Scriptwriter\u003c\/em\u003e follows eighteen-year-old Marito: law student, aspiring writer, radio news hack, and soon-to-be problem for his own extended family.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"391\" data-end=\"799\"\u003eHis life is thrown off course by two arrivals: Julia, a recently divorced Bolivian woman fourteen years his senior, and Pedro Camacho, an obsessive radio serial writer addicted to melodrama.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"801\" data-end=\"1200\"\u003eVargas Llosa builds the book in alternating currents between characters. Marito’s comic, semi-autobiographical account of desire, work, family scandal and literary ambition, spliced with Camacho’s increasingly deranged soap-opera scripts. It's a romance and a farce, sure, but also a study of fiction-making itself. We see how stories breed, distort, repeat, lose control, and start gnawing through the walls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1202\" data-end=\"1602\"\u003eFunny, formally playful and much sharper than its premise suggests, this is Vargas Llosa at his most readable. A good one for readers who like their Latin American fiction less mystical-cloud-machine and more “young writer makes terrible decisions while a radio man goes insane.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1617\" data-end=\"2036\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1984 Picador paperback edition, translated from the Spanish by Helen R. Lane. Some visible cover and corner wear, including creasing\/rubbing to edges and general age-toning, but a solid reading copy with excellent period Picador cover design.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44657825611859,"sku":null,"price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-26T112359.649.png?v=1779758764","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/aunt-julia-and-the-scriptwriter-by-mario-vargas-llosa","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}