A Heart So White by Javier Marias

Javier Marías's A Heart So White chronicles with the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy―its possible convenience, its price, and even its civility―hovers throughout the novel. A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence: Marías elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into shadows and on to the costs of ambivalence. ("My hands are of your colour; but I shame/to wear a heart so white"―Shakespeare's Macbeth.)

 REVIEWS

"Marías...remains almost unknown in America. What are we waiting for?" - Wendy Lesser, The New York Times Book Review

"The most subtle and gifted writer in contemporary Spanish literature."  - Boston Globe

"The work of a supreme stylist.... It is brilliantly done." -James Woodall, The Times (London)

PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback
Publisher: Vintage International
ISBN: 978-0307950765
304 pages