A breathtaking reimagining of the classic themes of love, death and memory - by Spain's greatest living writer
Every day, Maria Dolz stops for breakfast at the same cafe. And every day she enjoys watching a handsome couple who follow the same routine. Then one day they aren't there, and she feels obscurely bereft.
A breathtaking reimagining of the classic themes of love, death and memory - by Spain's greatest living writer
Every day, Maria Dolz stops for breakfast at the same cafe. And every day she enjoys watching a handsome couple who follow the same routine. Then one day they aren't there, and she feels obscurely bereft.
A breathtaking reimagining of the classic themes of love, death and memory - by Spain's greatest living writerEvery day, Maria Dolz stops for breakfast at the same cafe. And every day she enjoys watching a handsome couple who follow the same routine. Then one day they aren't there, and she feels obscurely bereft.It is only later, when she comes across a newspaper photograph of the man, lying stabbed in the street, that she discovers who the couple are. Some time afterwards, when the woman returns to the cafe with her children, who are then collected by a different man, and Maria approaches her to offer her condolences, an entanglement begins which sheds new light on this apparently random, pointless death . . .
“Mesmerising . . . At this very fine and disturbing novel's core is a compelling meditation on love in all its ramifications”
Herald
The real pleasure is in the strange things his narrators do to the business of narration. Marías has discovered a unique form -- Adam Thirlwell TLS
Plotted with tremendous skill and elegance, this cerebral tale is entirely absorbing Daily Mail
The classical themes of love, death and fate are explored with elegant intelligence by Marías in what is perhaps his best novel so far' -- Alberto Manguel Guardian
Marías at his most haunting Financial Times
No one else, anywhere, is writing quite like this -- Tim Martin Daily Telegraph
Absorbing and unnerving . . . powered by the pressure of good old-fashioned suspense Sunday Times
A murder mystery that's also a brilliant meditation on life, love and death -- Robert McCrum Observer
Javier Marias (Author)Javier Marias is the author of sixteen works in Spanish, which have been translated into forty-five languages including English. His translated English works are All Souls, A Heart So White, Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, When I Was Mortal, Dark Back of Time, The Man of Feeling, Voyage Along the Horizon, Written Lives, the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy (Fever and Spear, Dance and Dream and Poison, Shadow and Farewell), Bad Nature, While the Women Are Sleeping, The Infatuations, Thus Bad Begins and, Venice, An Interior. Javier Marias 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.Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)Margaret Jull Costa has translated the works of many Spanish and Portuguese writers, among them novelists- Javier Marias, Jose Saramago and E a de Queiroz, and poets- Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Mario de Sa-Carneiro and Ana Luisa Amaral. Her work has brought her numerous prizes, most recently, the 2018 Premio Valle-Inclan for On the Edge by Rafael Chirbes. In 2014, she was awarded an OBE for services to literature.
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