The Bad Girl

by Mario Vargas Llosa, Edith Grossman (Translator)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312427764
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	10/28/2008
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Mario Vargas Llosa was born in Peru in 1936. He 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 also won the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world’s most distinguished literary honor. His many works of fiction and nonfiction include The Feast of the Goat, In Praise of the Stepmother, and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, all published by FSG. He died in Lima at age 89 in 2025.

Edith Grossman (1936 - 2023) translated the poetry and prose of major Spanish-language and Latin American authors, including Nobel laureates Gabriel García Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa, as well as Alvaro Mutis, Mayra Montero, and Miguel de Cervantes.

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher

Mario Vargas Llosa's perversely charming new novel isn't among his major books—it lacks the depth of Conversation in the Cathedral, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter or even the more recent and less successful The Feast of the Goat—but it is irresistibly entertaining and, like all of its author's work, formidably smart…Obviously, the novel was written for the sheer fun of it—the fun for Vargas Llosa in writing it, the fun for us in reading it. It also obviously was written out of a deep nostalgia for the author's lost youth and for the Lima in which he then lived. He evokes it beautifully…Edith Grossman…has translated The Bad Girl with her accustomed skill and grace, making this lovely novel wholly accessible to American readers.
—The Washington Post

Jonathan Yardley

Emma Bovary has fascinated Vargas Llosa nearly all his writing life, from his first reading of Madame Bovary in 1959, when he had just moved to Paris at the age of 23. In 1986, was published, and it's as much a declaration of Vargas Llosa's love for Emma as a work of literary criticism. Now, in his most recent book, a splendid, suspenseful and irresistible novel, he takes possession of the plot of Madame Bovary just as thoroughly and mystically as its heroine continues to possess him. Translated by Edith Grossman with the fluid artistry readers have come to expect from her renditions of Latin American fiction, The Bad Girl is one of those rare literary events: a remaking rather than a recycling.
—The New York Times

Kathryn Harrison

The Peruvian-born author's latest novel is an impressive logical extension of the seriocomic romances (e.g., Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, In Praise of the Stepmother) that are among his most appealing books. It's the story of a grand passion, nursed for several decades by its protagonist and narrator Ricardo Somocurcio, who rises from humble beginnings in Lima to a distinguished career as a globetrotting translator for UNESCO and later success as a novelist. The object of his lustful affection is a Chilean beauty named Lily, who captures his heart (without giving herself fully to him) when they are teenagers, then complicates his life during subsequent years when he encounters her-or versions of her-in various locations. "Lily" thus becomes an Eternal Feminine figure (somewhat reminiscent of Thomas Pynchon's elusive "V."). Wherever duty sends Ricardo, Lily shows up-initially teasing him and holding him at bay, later consenting to make love with him (before fleeing again). In Paris she appears as radical revolutionary Comrade Arlette, then as Parisian diplomat's wife Madame Arnoux. In Tokyo, she's Kuriko, mistress to a sadistic Yakuza boss whose violent pleasures destroy her health. In London, she's Mrs. Richardson, this time a British diplomat's spouse. Years pass, political allegiances are embraced then abandoned, and as Lily fails physically and emotionally, Ricardo, though never freed from the erotic spell she has cast over him, manages to move and grow beyond her. Though the novel sometimes feels like a semi-autobiographical summary of the author's life, opinions and emotions, it's energized by crisp writing, wry humor and a brilliantly deployed cast who variously enable,frustrate and mirror the experiences of the two principal characters. And it's capped by a sublime metafictional moment that creates a heart-wrenching crescendo. A contemporary master remains at the top of his game.

Kirkus Reviews