Description: Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager in Lima in 1950, and next in Paris, where she appears as the enchanting Comrade Arlette. In Llosa's beguiling novel, the strange bedfellows of good and bad turn out not to be what they appear.
Brief description: 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.
Review Quotes:
"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