Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

Language Notes
Text: English, Spanish (translation)


The Merriam-Webster Encylopedia of Literature
Comic novel by Mario Vargas Llosa, published as La tia Julia y el escribidor in 1977. Vargas Llosa uses counterpoint, paradox, and satire to explore the creative process of writing and its relation to the daily lives of writers. One half of the story is an autobiographical account of an aspiring writer named Marito Varguitas, who falls in love with Julia, the divorced sister-in-law of his Uncle Lucho. Marito's success at writing and romance contrasts with the fortunes of Pedro Camacho, the protagonist of the other half of the story, who is a devoted but declining author of radio soap operas.


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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.


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