If writing about himself, exposing himself as in "una ceremonia parecida al strip tease" (Historia secreta de una novela), is what Vargas Llosa has done up to now under various disguises, then [La tía Julia y el escribidor] constitutes an exercise in boldness and brazenness. Half of La tía Julia is the account of an episode from the writer's youth … and the writer does not even hide behind a character: the protagonist is unmistakably named Varguitas o Marito, which introduces a perturbing element in the work of a novelist who has made Flaubertian objectivity a trademark in his writing. The other half of the novel (that which corresponds to the escribidor of the title) presents the story of Pedro Camacho, a picturesque type who earns his living as a writer of soap operas and whose "texts" are of a morbid and exaggerated unreality.

This bipolar structure...