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The Bad Girl

By Mario Vargas Llosa
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Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
The Bad Girl follows Ricardo Somocurcio's lifelong passion for a mysterious woman known initially as Lily in 1950s Lima. Their tumultuous relationship spans decades and continents—from revolutionary Paris to affluent lives in England and Japan —as Ricardo remains captivated despite the many changes and challenges their love endures.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$5100

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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This novel will appeal to readers of literary fiction who enjoy complex love stories set against vivid historical backdrops, particularly those interested in themes of obsession, identity, and cultural change in the mid-20th century.

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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.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

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.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780312427764

Publisher: St Martin's Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 28 October 2008

Country: United States

Imprint: St Martin's Press

Contributors:

  • Translated by Ms Edith Grossman

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 20.0mm

Width: 140.0mm

Height: 206.0mm

Weight: 272g

Pages: 288

Collections

Fiction General Fiction Literary Fiction Mario Vargas Llosa

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.

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