A man lies sleepless in a foul-smelling room while raucous noises come from next door, and women—past and present, real or imagined—pass through his mind. From these few elements, Romanian author Dumitru Tsepeneag builds a dreamlike world both ancient and contemporary, and as mesmerizing as that in his critically acclaimed Vain Art of the Fugue. Praised by Emil Cioran for its precise and masterly evocation of sensual detail, The Necessary Marriage confirms Tsepeneag's position as one of the most important Eastern European writers of the post-communist era.