Berta Isla

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Marías is above all interested in negative states: waiting, uncertainty, insignificance, ignorance, deception and self-deception. Perennials PERENNIALS constant friends A selection of novels, memoirs and more by some of our favourite authors. When Berta Isla was a schoolgirl, she decided she would marry Tomás Nevinson—the dashing half-Spanish, half-English boy in her class with an extraordinary gift for languages. Both lose their virginity to other people: Tom, while he’s at Oxford, studying languages; Berta to a young bullfighter she meets in the street during an anti-government rally.

finest novel to date * Alex Clark * Compelling * Tatler * A twisty, thought-provoking tale that puts notions of truth and morality under pitiless scrutiny * The Guardian * elegant, discursive, persuasively vivid novel.Having tinkered with the spook-yarn formula in his Your Face Tomorrow trilogy, Marías strips back the action to stage a dialled-up drama of early motherhood, pitting Berta’s experience against her husband’s in a late-night argument over the kitchen table. Tom now embarks on a double life, posing as an embassy employee and raising a family in Madrid with Berta while frequently travelling abroad to take part in undercover operations. He has published fifteen novels, including The Infatuations and A Heart So White, as well as three collections of short stories and several volumes of essays.

With meticulous insight and understanding of the human soul, Marias examines the urge to change our destiny, and the hopeless exile we bring upon ourselves. Marías transforms a spy thriller into an eloquent depiction of those left behind at home in this rich novel .His work has been translated into forty-three languages and has won a dazzling array of international literary awards, including the prestigious Dublin IMPAC award for A Heart So White. Truly multicultural and multilingual, he can claim more than one place of belonging while also being perfectly capable of feeling at ease in more than one cultural setting. See our Remarkables Archive list for what is no longer in print, but which we are happy to track down. Spain’s most eminent novelist, Nobel laureate in waiting, translated into more than 40 languages, Marías likes to play with existential ideas. Marías has been touted as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, this novel illustrates why.