Javier Marías, Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me. Penguin Modern Classics, 2012. Translated (brilliantly) from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa. First published in Spanish, 1994; in English, 1996 Javier Marías is the novelist I’ve written about more than … Continue reading
Javier Marías, Berta Isla. Hamish Hamilton, 2018. Translated by Margaret Jull Costa Spanish novelist Javier Marías deals in what grammarians (and philosophers, probably) call epistemic modality: the degree of certainty in a belief or knowledge upon which a proposition is … Continue reading
Joseph Brodsky, Watermark: An Essay on Venice. Penguin Classics, 2013. First published 1992. Javier Marías, Venice: An Interior. Translated by Margaret Jull Costa. Penguin Books, 2016 [and part of the essay collection Between Eternities, 2017]. First published in Spanish, 1988. … Continue reading
Javier Marías, Written Lives. Penguin Modern Classics, 2016. Translated by Margaret Jull Costa. First published in Spain as Vidas escritas, 2000; US, New Directions, 2006 ‘Writers are monsters’, said Hilary Mantel in her introduction to Elizabeth Taylor’s Angel (the VMC … Continue reading
Javier Marías, Thus Bad Begins (Hamish Hamilton hardback, 2016) 503pp When I started this blog back in 2013, Javier Marías was one of the first novelists I posted about. He’s surely one of the most important and gifted writers of … Continue reading
Javier Marías, The Infatuations. Hamish Hamilton, London, 2013. …the dead are quite wrong to come back, and yet almost all of them do, they won’t give up, and they strive to become a burden to the living until the living … Continue reading
I’m going to the States next week, so may not get much time to blog for a while. I thought you might like a little more material to peruse on the superb Javier Marías, subject of my recent 3-part critique … Continue reading
This is the third part of my critique of Javier Marías’s trilogy of novels, ‘Your Face Tomorrow’ (YFT). In the first two parts I looked at his theme of interpretation, the elaborate syntactical structure of his sentences, and the meandering, … Continue reading
Last Thursday (May 30) I posted the first instalment of my critique of the brilliant trilogy of novels by Javier Marías, Your Face Tomorrow (YFT). I’m delighted and honoured to say that the eminent author re-posted my piece on his own … Continue reading
Javier Marías , Your Face Tomorrow (YFT) This is the first instalment of a blog post that will extend in several parts over the next few days or weeks; I’ll continue with the second instalment over the weekend. I hope … Continue reading