Next protagonist in my apparent "deeply disagreeable men" run: Zama, a slaughterer of Indians turned petty bureaucrat, waiting to be promoted from a post in the late-18th-century Argentinian outback. We watch his life slowly disintegrating, one paranoid episode at a time.

Zama is a routine misogynist, racist, colonialist and generally amoral person. His thinking and scheming is fully devoid of any shame or decency, every thought revolves around his advantage – but it just doesn't add up: He has a knack for contradicting himself constantly without noticing, and with every further delusion about his future, standing or willpower, the story becomes a long downward slide, ending in physical horror and a twisted vision of hope.

Di Benedetto delivers all this in precise, often dense prose, timeless in its style but firmly grounded in the protagonist's historical and geographical context.

And he puts us into this weirdest of positions: We want to see Zama fail and falter – and still we root for him.