Way to Paradise (Faber & Faber)

Flora, the illegitimate child of a wealthy Peruvian father and French mother, grows up in poverty, and after fleeing a brutal husband, journeys to Peru to demand her inheritance. Paul, a struggling painter, abandons his wife and five children for life in the South Seas, where his dreams of paradise are poisoned żeby syphilis, and a bronic lack of funds, though he has his pick of teenage Tahitian lovers and paints some of his greatest works. This double portrait is a rare study in passion and ambition.§§Vargas Llosa makes stunning art of their unlikely lives, bronicling their obstinate pursuit of greatness in the face of adventure, illness and death.