El que apaga la luz, title taken from one of Somerset Maugham’s sentences, is a book full of incurable patients, obsessions that culminate in the worst of nightmares (insomnia) and whose only relief is suicide. Characters tormented by evil deeds of which they cannot repent, who try to find answers to justify their deeds but find only angst and uncertainty. A man who listens to the Tower of Pisa moaning every night, a boy who feels that every moment of his life has happened before, the triple denial of the first Pope, a child who wants to become an orphan when he grows up, the loneliness of a fat woman, or a terrorist’s insomnia, among other perversions, turns El que apaga la luz into a very optimistic book: it tells the readers they are lucky not to be one of the main characters. Because, why fool ourselves, few things comfort us more and help us endure and weaken our misfortunes as misfortunes suffered by others. “A revelation.” (Miguel García-Posada, El País) “An excellent storyteller.” (Luis Antonio de Villena, El Mundo) “A cult book, a great talent.” (José Ribas, Ajoblanco)