It rarely happens that a novel literally subjugates its readers, I mean that for a few days life starts to revolve around the attention we devote to reading a work of fiction. And that afterwards, once the reading is finished, it starts to revolve around the impact the novel has left on us, the emotions it has made us feel, or the ideas it has summoned, or brought to life, within our thoughts. This has recently happened to me with Before the Darkness Comes, by Fausto Puerto Quetglas, which has just been published by Angle Editorial. It has happened to me, moreover, twice: when I read it in original form, about a year ago, and now that I have reread it as a published book. The author, I will not hide it, is a good friend of mine, but believe me that this is entirely irrelevant: the novel would be magnificent regardless even if Puerto Quetglas and I did not know each other at all, as is possible for many of you, unless you are customers of the Món de Llibres bookstore, in Manacor, which the author has been running for more than twenty years.