The book's first section is a tete-a-tete with Emma Bovary; the second traces the gestation and birth of the novel, as well as Flaubert's method, his mania for documentation, and the novel's literary sources; the third situates it in literary history. Vargas Llosa's first work of non-fiction will send the reader back to Flaubert's masterpiece with renewed interest.
Mario Vargas Llosais Peru's foremost author and the winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1994 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor, and in 1995 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His many distinguished works includeThe Storyteller,The Feast of the Goat,Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter,Death in the Andes,In Praise of the Stepmother,The Bad Girl,Conversation in the Cathedral,The Way to Paradise, andThe War of the End of the World. He lives in London.