Javier Marías

Javier Marías was a Spanish novelist, translator and columnist known for his literary fiction and explorations of identity, secrecy and memory. He is best known for A Heart So White (1992), Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (1994), and the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy (2002–2007). His work was translated into 46 languages and sold nearly nine million copies worldwide.

Marías received many literary awards, including the Rómulo Gallegos Prize (1995) and the International Dublin Literary Award (1997).

Javier Marías Franco was born in Madrid on 20 September 1951, the fourth of five sons. His father, Julián Marías, was a philosopher who was briefly imprisoned and banned from teaching under the Franco regime. His mother, Dolores Franco Manera, was also a writer.

During his childhood, the family spent time in the United States, where his father taught at Yale and Wellesley. Marías later studied philosophy and literature at the Complutense University of Madrid between 1968 and 1973.

Marías wrote from a young age. At 14, he drafted The Life and Death of Marcelino Iturriaga, which would appear decades later in the short story collection While the Women Are Sleeping (2010). At 17, he moved to Paris to write his first novel, Los dominios del lobo (1971). “I wrote it in the mornings,” he said. The book was about an American family and was published with the help of Juan Benet and Vicente Molina Foix.

He worked as a translator from the 1970s, translating works by Conrad, Nabokov, Faulkner, and others. In 1979, he won Spain’s national translation award for Tristram Shandy. Between 1983 and 1985, he lectured on Spanish literature and translation at Oxford University.

In 1986, he published El hombre sentimental, followed by Todas las almas (1989), set in Oxford. The 1992 novel Corazón tan blanco was well received and translated into English as A Heart So White. He shared the 1997 International Dublin Literary Award with translator Margaret Jull Costa. Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí (1994) followed, with a protagonist who was a ghostwriter.

Marías said his later protagonists were interpreters or translators because “they are people who are renouncing their voices.” In 2002, he began Your Face Tomorrow, a trilogy completed in 2007. It was followed by The Infatuations (2011), which won the Spanish national novel prize, though Marías refused it: “I don’t want to be indebted to any government.”

In 1997, he was named King of the literary micronation Redonda by Jon Wynne-Tyson. Marías founded the Reino de Redonda publishing house and conferred mock titles on figures such as Pedro Almodóvar and A. S. Byatt. He also created the Premio Reino de Redonda, awarded to authors including J. M. Coetzee, Umberto Eco, and Alice Munro.

Javier Marías died in Madrid on 11 September 2022 from pneumonia caused by COVID-19, aged 70.