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Reading lists

9 of the best books set in Spain

Berta Isla

'The most subtle and gifted writer in contemporary Spanish literature' Boston Globe 
 
'No one else, anywhere, is writing quite like this' Daily Telegraph 
 
A thrilling new literary offering from the acclaimed author of The Infatuations and A Heart So White 
 
'For a while, she wasn't sure that her husband was her husband. Sometimes she thought he was, and sometimes not...' 
 
Berta Isla and Tomás Nevinson meet in Madrid. Young and in love, they quickly decide to spend their lives together - never suspecting that they will grow to be total strangers, both living under the shadow of disappearances. 
 
Tomás, half-Spanish and half-English, has an extraordinary gift for languages and accents. Leaving Berta to study at Oxford, he catches the interest of a certain government agency, and its mysterious agent, Bertram Tupra. Tomás is determined to evade the agent's attentions but his fate is sealed by an escalating series of events that will affect the rest of his life - and that of his beloved Berta. Finishing his time at Oxford, he returns to Madrid to marry her, already knowing that the life they planned has been lost forever. 
 
Darkly gripping, Berta Isla examines a relationship condemned to secrecy and concealment, to pretence and conjecture, to resentment mingled with loyalty. With meticulous insight and understanding of the human soul, Marías examines the urge to change our destiny, and the hopeless exile we bring upon ourselves.

Marías weaves a thrilling and desolate meditation on the psychic costs of the deep state's dark arts.

A twisty, thought-provoking tale that puts notions of truth and morality under pitiless scrutiny

elegant, discursive, persuasively vivid novel...powerful and indelible

'For a while, she wasn't sure that her husband was her husband. Sometimes she thought he was, and sometimes not.' 
 
Berta and Tomás meet in Madrid and, though both young, they decide to spend their lives together. Eighteen and betrothed, Tomás leaves to study at Oxford. His talent for languages quickly catches the interest of a certain government agency, but Tomás resists their offers - until one day he makes a mistake that will affect the rest of his life, and that of his beloved Berta. After university he returns to marry her, knowing he won't be able to stay for long . . . 
 
Gripping and intricate, Berta Isla is about a relationship built on secrets and lies - and the counter forces of resentment and loyalty at its core.

and Other Writings

Between Eternities

'A Marías sentence is a place of infinite richness and surprises, full of fascinating byways and glimpses of a distant landscape that hoves into view and then fades away' Independent 
 
'No one else, anywhere, is writing quite like this' Daily Telegraph 
 
A new and exhilarating collection of writings from the author ofThe Infatuations andA Heart So White 
 
Internationally renowned writer Javier Marias is a tireless examiner of the world around us, an enthusiastic debunker of pretensions of every kind, and a true polymath. This new collection of essays shows the full extent of his curiosity and wit, ranging from the literary to the philosophical to the autobiographical, from football to cinema, comic books to mortality to 'Why Almost No One Can Be Trusted'. 
 
Trenchant and wry, subversive and penetrating, Marias demonstrates a dazzling intellectual vigour, showing with exhilarating verve why he is so often said to be Spain's greatest living writer.

Stylish, and spooky, essays on films, books, places and people by a world-class novelist

Javier Marías is the author of sixteen works in Spanish, translated into forty-two languages. His translated English works include All Souls, A Heart So White, Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy, The Infatuations and Thus Bad Begins. Javier Marías has received numerous literary prizes including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Prix Formentor. He lives and works as a translator and columnist in Madrid. His new novel, Berta Isla, will be published by Hamish Hamilton in October 2018.

Internationally renowned writer Javier Marias is a tireless examiner of the world around us, an enthusiastic debunker of pretensions of every kind, a polymath and a rogue. This selection of his inimitable non-fiction pieces are published together in English for the first time. 
 
Following in the essayistic tradition of Montaigne, Between Eternities ranges widely from the literary to the philosophical to the autobiographical, from football to cinema, comic books to mortality to 'Why Almost No One Can Be Trusted'. Trenchant and wry, subversive and penetrating, Marias demonstrates a dazzling intellectual vigour, showing with exhilarating verve why he is so often said to be Spain's greatest living writer.

Fever and Spear

Your Face Tomorrow, Volume 1

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'Your Face Tomorrow is already being compared with Proust and rightly so' Observer 
 
'One of contemporary literature's major works ... you have to open this book' Ali Smith 
 
'I am myself my own fever and pain' 
 
Jacques Deza has been told he has a gift: he can see through people; guess just from their faces what will become of them. When he encounters the enigmatic Bertram Tupra at a party, Deza is persuaded to join a mysterious underground group. His task: to observe an assortment of people - politicians, celebrities, seemingly ordinary citizens - and predict their next move. But where will Deza's descent into this twilight world eventually take him? The first part of Javier Marias' masterly trilogy asks how well we truly know and understand those around us. 
 
Translated by Margaret Jull Costa

You are dazzled by the author's intelligence and understanding of human nature

Your Face Tomorrow is already being compared with Proust and rightly so. It is a novel of extraordinary subtlety and pathos. The next thing Marias deserves is the Nobel Prize

He has as gift for the wickedly comic set piece...He seems incapable of writing a thoughtless or throwaway sentence.We need more novelists like Marias

Dance and Dream

Your Face Tomorrow, Volume 2

'Unquestionably the most significant Spanish writer of his generation ... Your Face Tomorrow is rich, haunting, intriguing' Observer 
 
'This trilogy must be one of the greatest novels of our age' Antony Beevor 
 
'Fear is the greatest force that exists, as long as you can adapt to it' 
 
Jacques Deza has been recruited into an undercover spy network by the inscrutable Bertram Tupra. But when he is forced to witness an act of horrifying brutality in a night-club, he finds himself falling apart, haunted by his own memories of the bloodshed of the Spanish Civil War. As Deza tries to disentangle himself from an increasingly disturbing world, the second volume in Javier Marias' magnificent trilogy explores violence, corruption and what we are capable of. 
 
Translated by Margaret Jull Costa

One of contemporary literature's major works... You have to open this book

Fantastically funny... As a practitioner of the novel, Marías has few peers at the moment...Marías is a deeply necessary writer, a crusader, funny, pungent, full of wrath and love

Unquestionably the most significant Spanish writer of his generation... Your Face Tomorrow is a rich, haunting, intriguing, sometimes frustrating meditation on the significance of our lives that also shines an unforgiving light on a too-often forgotten bloodshed

By turns ebullient, snappish, lyrical, self-delighting and chilling... Marías's fiercely perceptive novels are among the best work being produced anywhere at the moment

Poison, Shadow and Farewell

Your Face Tomorrow, Volume 3

'Your Face Tomorrow is already being compared with Proust and rightly so' Observer 
 
'One of contemporary literature's major works ... you have to open this book' Ali Smith 
 
The concluding part in Javier Marías' spy trilogy masterwork 
 
 Jacques Deza is back in London and once again working for the secret intelligence agency run by Bertram Tupra. Deza finds himself forced to watch Tupra's collection of incriminating videotapes of important public figures. The recordings document unconventional private lives - and horrific acts. The scenes enter him like a poison, contaminating everything good, yet he is powerless to counteract them. Set against a background of brutality, Poison, Shadow and Farewell asks whether violence can ever be justified and completes the extraordinary journey that has led us on a descent into hell and a re-emergence, not entirely unscathed, into life.

Your Face Tomorrow is already being compared with Proust and rightly so. It is a novel of extraordinary subtlety and pathos. The next thing Marias deserves is the Nobel Prize

Madame du Deffand and the Idiots

'She was bored and fought against her boredom, which only bored her still more.' 
 
Five sparkling, irreverent brief portraits of famous literary figures (including libertines, eccentrics and rogues) from Spain's greatest living writer. 
 
Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

Javier Marías

Margaret Jull Costa

Tomás Nevinson, a retired MI6 agent, is working for the British Embassy in Madrid when his former handler, the sinister Bertram Tupra, offers to bring him back inside for one last assignment. His mission: to catch and, if necessary, kill a terrorist gone to ground in Northern Spain after bombings in Barcelona and Zaragoza. The trouble is there are three suspects – all women – and it may not actually be any of them. To find out, Nevinson must move incognito to the small town where the three women separately live, and become an intimate friend to each, in the hope of uncovering a clue . . . 
 
A philosophical thriller with a climate of suspense to rival le Carré and a psychological depth that is purely Marias’s own, this is a novel that explores the deepest of human questions: in what circumstances can killing be called just?

Javier Marías

Tomás Nevinson

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