The Bad Girl: A Novel

Mario Vargas Llosa

Mar 2011 · Sold by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About this ebook

A New York Times Notable Book of 2007

From Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa comes The Bad Girl, a "...splendid, suspenseful, and irresistible [novel]. . . A contemporary love story that explores the mores of the urban 1960s--and 70s and 80s."--The New York Times Book Review

Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as "Lily" in Lima in 1950, when she flits into his life one summer and disappears again without explanation. He loves her still when she reappears as a revolutionary in 1960s Paris, then later as Mrs. Richardson, the wife of a wealthy Englishman, and again as the mistress of a sinister Japanese businessman in Tokyo. However poorly she treats him, he is doomed to worship her. Charting Ricardo's expatriate life through his romances with this shape-shifting woman, Vargas Llosa has created a beguiling, epic romance about the life-altering power of obsession.

Ratings and reviews

One of my all-time favorites. If you don't think about that one relationship where you gave everything and you ended up with your heart broken while reading this book you haven't lived yet. Live is not about doing everything right. It is about learning the lessons while making the mistakes.

Adorable la pluma de Vargas Llosa, Peru tiene que estar orgulloso de su hijo prodigo.

I recommend reading it in its original language though.

About the author

Mario Vargas Llosa is Peru's foremost author and the winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1994 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor, and in 1995 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His many distinguished works include The Storyteller, The Feast of the Goat, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Death in the Andes, In Praise of the Stepmother, The Bad Girl, Conversation in the Cathedral, The Way to Paradise, and The War of the End of the World. He lives in London.