A detailed and lively discussion and analysis of the novels, short
stories, newspaper columns, and other works of one of the most important
and popular writers in Spain today.
This book provides the most comprehensive study to date of the full
range of Marías' writing, including discussion and analysis of his
literary and intellectual formation, his development as a novelist and
short story writer, andhis unique perspective offered in nearly
twenty-five years of newspaper columns on topics ranging from religion
to football. Above all, Marías is examined as a writer of fictions. As a
translator of several canonical works from English to Spanish, Marías
came to appreciate the preciseness of words as well as their ambiguity,
their capacity to represent as well as their propensity to distort. The
author examines Marías's constant awareness of how languagecan be used
to construct stories as the foundation for engaging the world as well as
for imagining it. The nature of Marías's storytelling, and the way in
which he imagines, form the principal focus of this Companion.
David K. Herzberger is Professor and Chair of the Department of Hispanic
Studies at the University of California, Riverside.