From a speech published in the book El arte de la distorsión. Vásquez is the author, most recently, of the story collection Songs for the Flames. Translated from the Spanish.

Reading fiction is a vice. As such, any attempt to explain it will run sooner or later into the wall of the irrational. In a much-quoted interview, Philip Roth says that reading novels is a “deep and singular pleasure, a gripping and mysterious human activity that does not require any more moral or political justification than sex.” The meaning of this statement has changed over time, mainly because it…