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Staff Pick
Often mentioned as a potential future Nobel laureate in literature, Javier Marías is primarily concerned with connections between people. In his fiction, he examines relationships and secrets in close detail, and explores how possible it is for people to truly know each other. Margaret Jull Costa's translation of A Heart So White renders his Proustian sentences in exquisite English. This book is perhaps the greatest accomplishment of Marías's long career thus far. Recommended By Adam P., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Award, and widely considered Javier Marías's masterpiece,
A Heart So White is a breathtaking novel about family secrets that chronicles the relentless power of the past.
Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy--its possible convenience, its price, and even its civility--hovers throughout the novel. A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence: Marías elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into shadows and onto the costs of ambivalence.
Review
"His prose possesses an exquisite, almost uncanny observation, recreating moments and moods in hypnotic depth." The Telegraph
Review
"Brilliant..... An entertaining and intelligent novel." The Washington Post
Review
"By far Spain's best writer today." Roberto Bolaño
About the Author
Javier Marías was born in Madrid in 1951. He has published ten novels, two collections of short stories and several volumes of essays. His work has been translated into thirty-two languages and won a dazzling array of international literary awards, including the prestigious Dublin IMPAC award for A Heart So White. He is also a highly practiced translator into Spanish of English authors, including Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Thomas Browne and Laurence Sterne. He has held academic posts in Spain, the United States and in Britain, as Lecturer in Spanish Literature at Oxford University.