Mario is an eighteen-year-old law student and radio news editor who falls in love with his 32-year-old divorced 'Aunt' Julia, the wife of his cousin. Their scandalous affair is interwoven with episodes from the radio soap-opera written by Mario's friend Pedro Comacho.

This edition of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - one of the great, defining novels of the late twentieth century - is produced to celebrate the seventieth birthday of Mario Vargas Llosa.