Mario Vargas Llosa`s masterful, multilayered novel is set in the Lima, Peru, of the author`s youth, where a young student named Marito is toiling away in the news department of a local radio station. His young life is disrupted by two arrivals. The first is his aunt Julia, recently divorced and thirteen years older, with whom he begins a secret affair. The second is a manic radio scriptwriter named Pedro Camacho, whose racy, vituperative soap operas are holding the city`s listeners in thrall. Pedro chooses young Marito to be his confidant as he slowly goes insane. Interweaving the story of Marito`s life with the ever-more-fevered tales of Pedro Camacho, Vargas Llosa`s novel is hilarious, mischievous, and masterful, a classic named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review.