The Bad Girl

Description

Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as 'Lily' in Lima in 1950, where she claims to be from Chile but vanishes the moment her claim is exposed as fiction. He loves her next in Paris as 'Comrade Arlette', an activist en route to Cuba, an icy, remote lover who denies knowing anything about the Lily of years gone by. Whoever the bad girl turns up as, and however poorly she treats him, Ricardo is doomed to worship her. Gifted liar and irresistible, maddening muse - does Ricardo ever know who she really is?

With novels including The War of the End of the World, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto and The Feast of the Goat, Mario Vargas Llosa has established an international reputation as one of the Latin America's most important authors.

"One of South America's finest contemporary writers." --Dominic Bradbury, "The Times "(London) " One of South America's finest contemporary writers." -- Dominic Bradbury, "The Times "(London) "Llosa writes an unabashed love story and makes no apologies for it. He seamlessly weaves it into the rich texture of the social atmosphere of the times. . . . Written with passion and energy that delivers."--"Rocky Mountain News ""Perversely charming . . . irresistibly entertaining."--"The Washington Post Book World ""A marvelous novel."--"Chicago Tribune ""Spans decades and continents--and in the process, with a deftness that borders on literary sleight of hand, bridges the personal and the universal."--"San Francisco Chronicle ""A beautifully constructed, stinging tease of a novel."--"The Seattle Times" "" "" "Llosa writes an unabashed love story and makes no apologies for it. He seamlessly weaves it into the rich texture of the social atmosphere of the times. . . . Written with passion and energy that delivers."--"Rocky Mountain News ""Perversely charming . . . irresistibly entertaining."--"The Washington Post Book World ""A marvelous novel."--"Chicago Tribune ""Spans decades and continents--and in the process, with a deftness that borders on literary sleight of hand, bridges the personal and the universal."--"San Francisco Chronicle ""A beautifully constructed, stinging tease of a novel."--"The Seattle Times""" "" "A marvelous novel."--"Chicago Tribune""A beautifully constructed, stinging tease of a novel."--"The Seattle Times" "Spans decades and continents--and in the process, with a deftness that borders on literary sleight of hand, bridges the personal and the universal."--"San Francisco Chronicle" "Perversely charming . . . irresistibly entertaining."--"The Washington Post Book World"