The bad girl
The Bad Girl ( Spanish: Travesuras de la niña mala ) is a novel by the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner for literature Mario Vargas Llosa from 2006.
content
15-year-old Ricardo Somocurcio grew up in Miraflores , a district of Lima , in the 1950s . There he meets a girl who pretends to be Chilean and fascinates him. But when her lie is exposed, she goes into hiding.
After completing his studies, Ricardo left Peru and emigrated to Paris as a translator . There he meets his childhood sweetheart again, this time under a different name. They begin a relationship that ends again when his lover leaves him and takes on a new identity in another place. Instead of the destitute Ricardo, she ties herself to men with power and money, even if these relationships are not good for her. This pattern is repeated over and over again over the course of decades and changes of location. Even when Ricardo marries his mistress after she had a traumatic relationship with a Japanese gangster and needed valid papers, this circumstance did not prevent him from being abandoned again for a richer man.
But finally his wife, who he has since found out, that she grew up in a poor district of Lima and is called Otilia, returns to him. She is incurably ill with cancer including tumor cachexia , her beauty destroyed. She is overwriting her assets to Ricardo because she has finally recognized him as her husband and her great love - and after a good month together in Madrid , she dies. Her final request to her husband is that he should not let her get off too badly in the book he is now sure to write.
The action takes place in Lima, briefly in Havana , over long stretches in Paris, London , Tokyo and Madrid. The second half of the 20th century and the turbulent history of Peru , which the narrator only experiences from afar, form the background. The girl is not just bad, but has an exceptionally developed instinct for self-preservation and adaptation as well as a special talent for swindles, while the first-person narrator of the novel, the good boy, belongs to the middle class. This contrast prevents the mutual love from finding lasting fulfillment, always flaring up briefly and violently and only being unreservedly affirmed on the last pages, in the last weeks of the bad girl's life.
classification
Mario Vargas Llosa describes The Bad Girl as a modern love story based on historical events on the one hand and fantasy on the other. It is his first work in which love is the central theme. The novel contains autobiographical allusions, even if the characters in it are fictional. Llosa also lived in Lima, Paris, London and Madrid.
reception
The echo in the German press was divided. The points of criticism included the flat drawing of the characters and the lack of illustration of their motivation. In addition, the frequent repetitions in person descriptions and within the plot were criticized. The erotic scenes are awkward and described from the perspective of an honest man.
Nevertheless, thanks to Llosa's narrative skills, the novel is entertaining. It is moving, instructive and amusing. The work of the translator Elke Wehr was praised. It reproduces the author's message in style and idiom.
German editions
- Mario Vargas Llosa: The Bad Girl. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-518-41832-7 .
- Mario Vargas Llosa: The Bad Girl. Paperback, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-518-45932-4 .
- Mario Vargas Llosa: The Bad Girl. Paperback, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-518-46325-3 .
literature
- Rolf Lessenich: The bad girl in the postmodern novel. Mario Vargas Llosa, "The Bad Girl" / "Travesuras de la niña mala" (2006) . In: rebellious - desperate - infamous. The bad girl as an aesthetic figure , edited by Renate Möhrmann , Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-89528-875-3 , pp. 435–448.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mar Roman: Love is theme of the latest novel by Vargas Llosa. Associated Press Worldstream, Madrid, 23 May 2006.
- ↑ a b Karin Ceballos Betancur: Everything so beautifully tender here. Frankfurter Rundschau, October 11, 2006, accessed on May 27, 2012.
- ↑ a b Jochen Jung: The scent of the depilated armpits. Die Zeit, September 28, 2006, accessed on May 27, 2012.
- ↑ a b c Friedmar Apel: How does my chronicler do in bed? FAZ, September 4, 2006, accessed on May 27, 2012.