Mario Vargas Llosa Cátedra 2026 - Closing Session

You are cordially invited to The Thread of the Voice: Madness and Writing in Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, the Closing Session of the Mario Vargas Llosa Cátedra 2026 seminar, featuring Mariela Dreyfus—Peruvian poet, essayist, and translator, moderated by Ángel Estévez.

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is a novel where forbidden love and unbridled imagination collide in the heart of Lima. Vargas Llosa intertwines his romance with the enigmatic Aunt Julia and the delirious radio serials of a brilliant scriptwriter. Humor, desire, and narrative chaos blend into a vibrant portrait of 1950s Peru. Each chapter alternates between reality and fiction until the two begin to deliciously blur—a story about how a life is invented… and how a life can become literature.

First published in 1977 (Editorial Seix Barral) and translated into English in 1982 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), the novel remains a cornerstone of Latin American literature.

For more information: criobo@ccny.cuny.edu | aestevez@ccny.cuny.edu