The Neighborhood

by Mario Vargas Llosa, Edith Grossman (Translator)

Overview

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

A thrilling tale of desire and Peruvian corruption swirls around a scandalous exposé that leads to murder

From the Nobel Laureate comes a politically charged detective novel weaving through the underbelly of Peruvian privilege. In the 1990s, during the turbulent and deeply corrupt years of Alberto Fujimori’s presidency, two wealthy couples of Lima’s high society become embroiled in a disturbing vortex of erotic adventures and politically driven blackmail.

One day Enrique, a high-profile businessman, receives a visit from Rolando Garro, the editor of a notorious magazine that specializes in salacious exposés. Garro presents Enrique with lewd pictures from an old business trip and demands that he invest in the magazine. Enrique refuses, and the next day the pictures are on the front page. Meanwhile, Enrique’s wife is in the midst of a passionate and secret affair with the wife of Enrique’s lawyer and best friend. When Garro shows up murdered, the two couples are thrown into a whirlwind of navigating Peru’s unspoken laws and customs, while the staff of the magazine embark on their greatest exposé yet.

Ironic and sensual, provocative and redemptive, the novel swirls into the kind of restless realism that has become Mario Vargas Llosa’s signature style. A twisting, unpredictable tale, The Neighborhood is at once a scathing indictment of Fujimori’s regime and a crime thriller that evokes the vulgarity of freedom in a corrupt system.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250310361
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	04/09/2019
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(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

Mixing a flair for pulpy dialogue and even pulpier characters, Vargas Llosa manages to convey empathy for that seediest of figures, the tabloid journalist. In venturing into genre territory, Nobel Prize–winner Vargas Llosa finds a sweet spot with this textured thriller that will appeal both to his established audience of literary-fiction readers and to fans of international crime novels.” —Booklist, starred review

“Reminiscent of Pynchon’s Inherent Vice in its use of genre fiction for higher purposes, this is an audacious and skillful novel." —Publisher's Weekly

"...this work is both crime thriller and social commentary and will keep fans of Nobel Laureate Vargas Llosa happy." —Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

From the Publisher

The Neighborhood…is a political mystery of the kind [Vargas Llosa] regularly turns out between his more monumental historical productions. The tone, perfectly conveyed in Edith Grossman's virtuoso translation, is amused and theatrical—realism that never asks the reader to forget it has been neatly contrived. The subject, however, couldn't be more serious…Vargas Llosa knows how the levers of power in his country work, and he uses his story to anatomize the degradation of civic life under Fujimori…To tell his story, Vargas Llosa employs the familiar telenovela technique of alternating chapters among different characters, allowing the destinies of the lowborn and the high, the powerful and the powerless, to intersect in ways they themselves never see. In a diseased body politic, he seems to say, no one is exempt from infection, and the sanity of every citizen is dependent upon that of his neighbor.

The New York Times Book Review - Michael Greenberg

2017-11-28
Sex, money, scandal, and power dance through this uneven tale of gossip and politics among the high-enders and media lowlifes of Lima, Peru.The Nobel Prize-winning author opens with two wealthy women, Marisa and Chabela, discovering the amorous benefits of their friendship. Marisa's industrialist husband, Enrique, faces blackmail in the next chapter when some nasty photos from a drunken orgy fall into the hands of a scandal-sheet editor named Garro. Enrique's problems escalate because he refuses to pay up and the photos appear in print. His wife's anger eventually subsides enough to reward him with a three-way with her and Chabela. Meanwhile side stories develop involving Garro's top reporter, Julieta, aka Shorty, and an old man named Juan whose livelihood was destroyed by Garro's media attacks. Enrique will come under suspicion when Garro is found brutally murdered; he spends a brief nightmarish time in jail. But it is Shorty who leads the book to what is often for Vargas Llosa (The Discreet Hero, 2015, etc.) the inevitable political freight when she is summoned to a session with Vladimiro Montesinos, aka the Doctor, the actual powerful head of Peru's intelligence service in the 1990s and right hand of President Alberto Fujimoro. Vargas Llosa was politically active and even ran for the presidency of his native Peru, losing to Fujimoro. There may be elements of payback in this novel, although it comes late—the historical denouement occurred in 2000—and seems superfluous given the known fates of the two officials. The story's strongest moments and characters revolve around the impoverished Barrios Altos neighborhood of Lima, especially Shorty and Juan and a few minor characters. By comparison, the lurid, telenovela lives of the wealthy supply only broad, unresolved ironies about class—in more than one definition—and some cringe-inducing sex scenes.A colorful but confusing and ultimately disappointing work by a great writer.

Kirkus Reviews