The Bad Girl: A Novel (Paperback)

Description

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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.

About the Author

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Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." He has also won the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world’s most distinguished literary honor. His many works include The Feast of the Goat, In Praise of the Stepmother, and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, all published by FSG.

Edith Grossman has translated the poetry and prose of major Spanish-language authors, including Gabriel García Marquez, Alvaro Mutis, and Mayra Montero, as well as Mario Vargas Llosa.

Praise For…

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“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