Spanish novelist Javier Marías dead at age 70
Javier Marías, Spain's most prestigious novelist of the past half century, has died, his publisher said Sunday (Sept. 11, 2022). He was 70.
Spanish news agency EFE reported that Marías passed away in a hospital after not recovering from a lung infection.
Marías was the author of 15 novels, translations and collections of his weekly newspaper columns. His best known novels include Heart So White, All Souls, Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me and Thus Bad Begins. Many of his works have been translated into English and other languages.
Born in Madrid in 1951, Marías published more than a dozen novels, and had a long-running column in the national Spanish newspaper El Pais. His fictional trilogy, Your Face Tomorrow — about a Spanish academic recruited to work in British intelligence — was called "the first authentic literary masterpiece of the 21st century" by the Guardian.
Marías spoke with CBC Radio's Writers & Company host Eleanor Wachtel in 2017 about his novel Thus Bad Begins, a psychological, erotic and political thriller that draws on both his country's dark past and his own family history.
"The search for truth should be a main preoccupation for everyone in society. But of course, it's not; it's less than ever before nowadays. I'm very aware of the consequences of what one says, and what one reveals," said Marías.
"I miss the times when people were a little more careful, discreet and thoughtful."
Listen | Javier Marías on Writers & Company:
He was considered for years to be the leading Spanish candidate to win the Nobel Prize for Literature since Camilo José Cela was awarded the honour in 1989.
"[This is] a sad day for Spanish literature," Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez tweeted. "Javier Marías, one of the greatest writers of our age, has left us. His immense and talented body of work will be fundamental for Spanish literature. My condolences for his family and friends in these difficult moments."
Marías was elected to Spain's Royal Academy, the nation's highest literary and linguistic authority, in 2006. Winner of several international fiction prizes, he was professor of Spanish literature and translation at Oxford and at Wellesley College in Massachusetts in the 1980s.
— With files from CBC Books
