Gonzalo Rojas, a Chilean poet in his twenties, has become a stepfather to his girlfriend’s six-year-old son. This, Gonzalo frets, might make him both padrastro (stepfather) and poetastro (minor poet), emasculated by suffix twice. But then, Alejandro Zambra’s superb fifth novel, which follows Gonzalo, Carla and young Vicente’s lives through teenage kicks and adult woes, is full of fretful, bumbling men.

Zambra, who’s Chilean himself and one of the sharpest writers in Spanish today, looks with comic affection at Santiago’s middle class. He has sport with their romantic notion that they’re born to poetic heights: “Being a Chilean poet,” says one Chilean poet, “is like being a Peruvian chef or a Brazilian soccer player.” Yet that doesn’t make them laughable: Gonzalo is talentless but he’s trying, and Vicente yearns at first to live up to what his padrastro represents. The boy will meet reality as a teenager when Gonzalo leaves the home, but Pru, an attractive young American, fortunately arrives. She’s also a writer, and her study of Santiago’s poetry scene is Zambra’s gift to himself: she and Vicente help their creator (and his reliable translator, Megan McDowell) to unpick the male ego, whether it’s libidinous, jealous or bruised. A highlight is Pato, Vicente’s best friend (and another poet), comically keen on verse and sex.

Zambra can also draw on a smaller, more delicate scale. When Gonzalo and Clara tell Vicente that they can’t afford an operation for their cat, the little boy starts selling his toys to pay for the vet himself. But the domestic and satirical passages share a warmth, and warm feelings for writers in particular. The Chileans fumble with social justice; the Americans think their Latin peers are all Nerudas manqués; and everyone, everywhere, all the time, is writing a terrible book. Chilean Poet, happily, is accomplished at all it does.

Chilean Poet is published by Granta at £16.99. To order your copy for £14.99 call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk