Daniel Sada, a contemporary Mexican writer who died in 2011, and of whom you’ve probably never heard, is highly recommended by Roberto Bolano and Carlos Fuentes. In fact, from the very beginning, his novel, Almost Never, reminded me of Bolano, which may be the reason why it took me a while to “get into” it. But once I did, I couldn’t put it down. Sada’s style, its rhythm and tone, are like nothing I’ve ever read; its energy draws you into the book like a vacuum cleaner.

The “plot” can be summarized in a few words: the protagonist, Demetrio, is caught between two women: a whore he met in a brothel, and who fell in love with him, and a “saint” from his aunt’s village, whom he idealizes, and who doesn’t let him touch her until their honeymoon. From the moment Demetrio meets the two women until his ever-receding marriage, several years filled with longing, copulations and masturbation pass. Demetrio is one of the most uninteresting characters I’ve ever encountered in a novel, and yet, somehow, Sada casts a spell on us, keeping us entranced for 330 pages. Of course, the spell would never work without the magic of the translator, Katherine Silver, who, after Edith Grossman, is our best translator from the Spanish.