Argentinian author and stay-at-home dad Lucas Pereyra has found a clever way to import, tax-free, the advance for his next book. Both Lucas’ flat and his marriage have seen better days and smuggling in the advance from Uruguay will leave him with some sorely needed cash and, hopefully, some forgiveness from his hard-working wife. There’s also an ulterior motive for going. Lucas has long fantasised about hooking up with the 28-year-old, beautiful woman he flirted with at a literary festival last time he visited. The Woman From Uruguay by Pedro Mairal is an intense and often comical account of what happens when hormones and the desire to escape from it all take over.

Leaving behind worries about his 4-year-old son, suspicions that his wife is having an affair and serious self-doubts about his talent as a writer, Lucas goes all in. He gets blasted, smokes pot, and acquires his first tattoo all the while trying to seduce the gorgeous but ominously named Guerra. As many a man has discovered before him, behaviour like that tends to catch up with you.

The Woman From Uruguay is an entertaining, well-written and easily consumed novel about a day in a man’s life that changes everything.

The Woman From Uruguay by Pedro Mairal is translated by Jennifer Croft and published by Bloomsbury, 152 pages.