Tomás Nevinson

A writer who loves the propulsiveness of the thriller, the page-turning compulsion that drives a reader through Eric Ambler or John le Carré * Financial Times * Mariás demonstrates why so many of his peers believe him to be among the greatest of contemporary novelists * The Herald * This is a spy thriller, but it reads like one transposed into music . . . Marías mesmerises us again and we are swept on by the long, powerful swells of his prose * Guardian * The most subtle and gifted writer in contemporary Spanish literature * Boston Globe * A Marías sentence is a place of infinite richness and surprises * Independent * No one else, anywhere, is writing quite like this * Daily Telegraph * Unquestionably the most significant Spanish writer of his generation * Observer * [Marías] uses language like an anatomist uses a scalpel to lay bare the innermost secrets of that strangest of species, the human being -- W. G. Sebald What makes Marías novels enthralling . . . is the irresistible, ruminative, allusive, Jamesian narrative voice * Daily Telegraph * A Spanish literary great . . . His writing is fine and subtle * Le Monde * Javier Marías's writing doesn't resemble anyone else's. It's easy to parody, but impossible to imitate . . . Javier Marias was the best writer in Spain -- Eduardo Mendoza Marías occupied a reputational perch in Spanish culture that would be almost inconceivable for an American author . . . Most considered him the greatest living Spanish writer * New York Times *