All of a sudden, Blanca Arias has it all. The daughter of middling Nicaraguan diplomats posted to Madrid, she marries, at the age of 19, the equally young and passionate Marquess of Loria, her darling Paquito, heir to one of the largest fortunes (and most august titles) in Spain. Paquito, as if on cue, dies of diphtheria, leaving his young widowed Marquise alone, free, and inconceivably rich.

Donoso’s luxurious and disturbing work details the sexual awakening of the Marquise of Loria as her white-gloved chauffeur shuttles her from tryst to tryst. But it’s not all Patek Phillipes and pink champagne: Blanca’s mother-in-law Casilda is scheming with her gang of sycophants to take back “their” fortune from this newly-minted Loria, and there’s no low they won’t sink to to get it. The mysterious presence of Luna, a Weimaraner pup who infiltrates Blanca’s chambers and hypnotizes her with his lunar gaze, twists this glittering elegy to the literary erotica of 1920s Madrid into something more: a psychological thriller and a profound investigation into the surfaces that the fortunate gild and polish to hide the darkness that lies beneath.

As exuberant as it is explicit—and elegantly translated into English for the first time by Megan McDowell—The Mysterious Disappearance of the Marquise of Loria—shows the Boom-era master Donoso in a lighter mode, and the result is irresistible.

Translated by: Megan McDowell