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."

马里奥·巴尔加斯·略萨，1936年生于秘鲁，著名作家、世界小说大师，被誉为“结构写实主义大师”和拉美“文学大爆炸”主将之一。创作过小说、剧本、散文随笔、诗、文学评论、政论杂文，也曾导演舞台剧、电影和主持广播电视节目及从政。他的长篇小说以触及重大社会与政治问题及结构新颖见长，诡谲瑰奇的小说技法与丰富多样而深刻的内容为他带来“结构写实主义大师”的称号。

“略萨曾经获得众多的文学奖项，是杰出的结构现实主义小说家。他的小说将触角伸向了广泛的社会现实，既能深刻抓住现实生活中的本质问题，更能将其加以想象和升华。他的作品对现实主义小说的革新产生了影响，在作品结构上有自己的特点。”

——略萨研究专家 赵德明教授