Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

This autobiographical novel by Mario Vargas Llosa is probably his most light-hearted. A young man's love affair with his aunt (by marriage) is interwoven with increasingly bizarre radio soap opera tales by a Bolivian writer in Lima in the 1950s. Like all of Vargas Llosa's books, the construction would put a fine Swiss watch to shame. The sly humor and humbling biographical content make Aunt Julia especially appealing.