The result: a comic novel that's both highly polished literature and fun, fun, fun, a comic novel that's actually funny. Mario Vargas Llosa se prepara para hacer historia con su ingreso a la Academia Francesa". France 24. 8 February 2023 . Retrieved 28 June 2023.

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is a humorous surreal novel by Mario Vargos Llosa, the Peruvian writer who is the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. The story’s structure is like a Russian nesting doll and its variants. It contains two main plot lines. The first is the realistic anchor of the 18 year old Varguitas (diminutive for Vargos) falling for his 32 year old divorced aunt by marriage, Julia. The story anchor is based on the author’s memory of his youth passionately pursuing his decade older aunt, Julia Urquidi Illanes. The second follows an obsessive Bolivian scriptwriter, Pedro Camacho, hired by the station Varguitas works for, to churn out numerous soap serials daily. In his interview, Vargas Llosa said that although Pedro Camacho is not a real person, he was based on a man Llosa knew who wrote radio serials for Radio Central in Lima. The man would churn out countless scripts with ease, barely taking time to review them. The man was the first professional writer Llosa has known. Llosa was fascinated with the unlimited world the man was able to create. One day, the man’s stories started to overlap, with the plots and characters getting mixed up. This inspired Vargas Llosa’s main theme. Vargas Llosa Wins The Jerusalem Prize", The New York Times, 17 January 1995 , retrieved 20 March 2008 Vargas Llosa votará por Alejandro Toledo en elecciones peruanas". Elcomercio.pe. Archived from the original on 10 April 2011 . Retrieved 7 April 2011. | Source in Spanish: "Vargas Llosa will vote for Alejandro Toledo in Peruvian elections" Heawood, Jonathan (24 November 2003), "Past Master: Review of Mario Vargas Llosa, The Way to Paradise", New Statesman, 132 (4665): 55 , retrieved 7 April 2008.a b LR, Mundo (10 December 2021). "Intelectuales rechazan ingreso de MVLL a la Academia Francesa tras apoyo a Fujimori y Kast". La República (in Spanish) . Retrieved 28 June 2023. Vargas Llosa, Mario (2011) [1994]. A fish in the water: a memoir. Lane, Helen R. New York: Picador. p.2011. ISBN 978-1-250-00577-9. OCLC 719428763. a b Jara, Matias (5 December 2021). "Kast: el candidato chileno que quiere construir zanjas en las fronteras con Perú y Bolivia". Ojo Público (in Spanish) . Retrieved 7 December 2021.

In those long ago days, I was very young and lived with my grandparents in a villa with white walls in the Calle Ocharan, in Miraflores. I was studying at the University of San Marcos, law, as I remember, resigned to earning myself a living later on by practicing a liberal profession, although deep down what I really wanted was to become a writer someday. Mario Vargas Llosa Papers". 2 July 2007. Archived from the original on 2 July 2007 . Retrieved 28 September 2020. Vargas Llosa was named in both the Panama Papers (2016) and Pandora Papers (2021) released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. [98] According to IDL-Reporteros, the British Virgin Islands company Melek Investing Inc. was documented to be owned by Vargas Llosa was used for book royalty profits and the sale of real estate in London and Madrid. [98] Following the Panama Papers leak in 2016, Carmen Balcells said on behalf of Vargas Llosa that investments were made "without the consent of Messrs. Vargas Llosa" while in the 2021 Pandora Papers leaks, Javier Martín, a representative of Vargas Llosa, said the writer "was not aware of the ownership of that company". [98] IDL-Reporteros provided a document showing Vargas Llosa's signature on a "Consent to Act as Director" form for Melek Investing Inc. as part of the 2021 leak. [98] Style of writing [ edit ] Plot, setting, and major themes [ edit ] The novel is based in part on the author's first marriage, to Julia Urquidi. Urquidi later wrote a memoir, Lo que Varguitas no dijo ( What little Vargas didn't say), in which she provided her own version of their relationship.Marito’s love story with Julia is held out in dramatic tension in the larger narrative but unfortunately Llosa struggles to round it off. The reader is made to care about their passionate romance till the final twist when the whole thing crumbles in a self-imposed drop scene. Or perhaps Llosa divests too much information for it to leave any lingering effect on the reader. Leaving it uncertain would probably have worked out better. But then I’m not the author of this novel, Mario Vargas Llosa is; and he is eloquent, engaging, endearing. He writes beautiful sentences dripping with wit and humour (or at least his translator Helen Lane does in this case, great work Helen!). Vargas Llosa's essays and journalism have been collected as Contra viento y marea, issued in three volumes (1983, 1986, and 1990). A selection has been edited by John King and translated and published as Making Waves. Set in Peru during the 1950s, it is the story of an 18-year-old student who falls for a 32-year-old divorcee. The novel is based on the author's real life experience. La utopía arcaica: José María Arguedas y las ficciones del indigenismo ( Archaic utopia: José María Arguedas and the fictions of indigenismo)

Larsen, Neil (2000), "Mario Vargas Llosa: The Realist as Neo-liberal", Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 9 (2): 155–179, doi: 10.1080/713679233, S2CID 191650802.I explained to her that love didn't exist, that it was the invention of an Italian named Petrarch and the Provencal troubadours. That what people thought was a crystal-clear outpouring of emotions, a pure effusion of sentiment, was merely the instinctive desire of cats in heat hidden beneath the poetic words and myths of literature. I didn't really believe a word of what I was saying and was simply trying to impress her. My erotico-biological theory, however, left Aunt Julia quite skeptical: did I honestly believe such nonsense? At the same time a very promising scriptwriter, employed by the radio station to write soap opera serials, enters the stage…