Esther Allen’s excellent translation [of Javier Marías’s Dark Back of Time] conveys the feel of her author’s idiolect.

The Times Literary Supplement

Dark Back of Time

Fiction by Javier Marías

Translated from Spanish by Esther Allen

Called by its author a “false novel,” Dark Back of Time begins with the tale of the odd effects of publishing All Souls, his witty and sardonic 1989 Oxford novel. All Souls is a book Marias swears to be fiction, but which its “characters”––the real-life dons and professors and bookshop owners who have “recognized themselves––fiercely maintain to be a roman á clef. With the sleepy world of Oxford set into fretful motion by a world that never “existed,” Marías further stirs things up by weaving together autobiography (the brother who died as a child; the loss of his mother), a legendary kingdom, strange ghostly literary figures, maps and photographs, halls of mirrors, a one-eyed pilot, a bullet lost in Mexico, and a curse in Havana. Dark Back of Time has been acclaimed here as “superb” (Review of Contemporary Fiction), “fantastically original” (Talk), “brilliant” (Virginia Quarterly Review), and “a rare gift” (The New York Times Book Review). “In the best manner of Borges,” The Hudson Review commented, this hybrid is “lush and mysterious.” Javier Marias, translated into thirty-four languages, has sold over four million copies of his books worldwide, and won a dazzling array of awards.

Paperback(published Jun, 01 2004)

ISBN
9780811215701
Price US
16.95
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
336

Clothbound(published Jun, 01 2004)

ISBN
9780811214667
Price US
27.95
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
336
Portrait of Javier Marías

Javier Marías

Contemporary Spanish novelist

Esther Allen’s excellent translation [of Javier Marías’s Dark Back of Time] conveys the feel of her author’s idiolect.

The Times Literary Supplement

Fascinating… Dark Back of Time [is] fresh (in both senses of the word) and sexy (in every sense of the word).

Bookforum