Mario Vargas Llosa the politician ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of Peru in 1990 as a fiscal conservative. Happily, Vargas Llosa the winning novelist remains a staunch romantic libertarian. The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 260 pages; $23) is, like his delectable Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977; translated into English in 1982), a roguish and sophisticated sex comedy with a few brain teasers tipped in.
At the heart of both books is a deep appreciation of individual liberty, a strong disdain for convention and a young man's infatuation with an interested older woman. Vargas Llosa forged his...
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