Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is Mario Vargas Llosa's autobiographical novel about a forbidden love affair, a manic radio scriptwriter, and the hilarious trials of an aspiring fiction writer. The multilayered novel is set in the Lima, Peru, of the author's youth, where a young student named Marito is toiling away in the news department of a local radio station. His young life is disrupted by two arrivals.

The first is his aunt Julia, recently divorced and thirteen years older than Marito. The two begin a secret affair. The second is a radio scriptwriter named Pedro Camacho, whose racy, vituperative soap operas hold the city's listeners in thrall. Camacho chooses young Marito as his only confidant as he slowly goes insane.

Interweaving the story of Marito's life with the ever-more-fevered tales of Pedro Camacho, Vargas Llosa's novel is hilarious, mischievous, and masterful. This classic work was named one of the best books of 1982 by The New York Times.