Aunt Julia and The Scriptwriter

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (Spanish: La tía Julia y el escribidor) is the fifth novel by Mario Vargas Llosa. It was published by Editorial Seix Barral, S.A., Spain, in 1977. Set in Peru during the 1950s, it is the story of an 18 year old student who falls for a 32 year old divorcee. The novel is based on the author's real life experience.

The plot concerns Mario, an aspiring writer, who works at a radio station that broadcasts, live each day, up to a half-dozen novelas (short-run soap operas). At the same time that the author meets his "Aunt Julia", the radio station, which had been buying scripts by weight from Cuba, hires a Bolivian scriptwriter named Pedro Camacho to write the serials. The novel chronicles the scriptwriter's rise and fall in tandem with the protagonist's affair and includes descriptions of the serials that the station broadcasts. As the novel progresses, the scripts begin to "fall apart" - the scriptwriter begins to lose track of the names of the characters, the details of his plots, etc., to the point where they become "hopelessly jumbled."

It is based in part on the author's first marriage, to Julia Urquidi. Urquidi later wrote a memoir, Lo que Varguitas no dijo (What little Vargas didn't say), in which she provided her own version of their relationship.

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter combines a fictional account of a period in Vargas' own life with a picture of Lima in the 1950s, a satirical look at Peruvian radio soap operas, and an examination of both the practical and creative aspects of writing.

Vargas Llosa's novel was later adapted as a Hollywood feature film, Tune in Tomorrow, in which the setting was moved from Lima, to New Orleans. The film was released as Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter in many countries.