The Bad Girl: A Novel

· Farrar, Straus and Giroux
4.8
17 reviews
Ebook
288
Pages
Eligible
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About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

4.8
17 reviews
Carlos Reyes
November 28, 2013
One of my all-time favorites. If you don't think about that one relationship where you gave everything and you ended up with your heart broken while reading this book you haven't lived yet. Live is not about doing everything right. It is about learning the lessons while making the mistakes.
1 person found this review helpful
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Marcos Guadarrama
June 3, 2014
Adorable la pluma de Vargas Llosa, Peru tiene que estar orgulloso de su hijo prodigo.
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Alessandra Arosemena
September 15, 2014
I recommend reading it in its original language though.
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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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