Dark Back of Time

From one of Spain’s greatest writers—and the international bestselling, award-winning author of The Infatuations–comes an odyssey into the nature of identity and of time that weaves together fact and fiction into a completely original and unforgettable hybrid.

“Stylish, cerebral…Marías is a startling talent…His prose is ambitious, ironic, philosophical, and ultimately compassionate.” —The New York Times

Called by its author a “false novel,” Dark Back of Time begins with the tale of the odd effects of publishing All Souls, his witty and sardonic 1989 Oxford novel. All Souls is a book Marías swears to be fiction, but which its “characters”–the real-life dons and professors and bookshop owners who have “recognized themselves”–fiercely maintain to be a roman à clef. With the sleepy world of Oxford set into fretful motion by a world that never “existed,” Dark Back of Time begins an odyssey into the nature of identity and of time. Marías weaves together autobiography, a legendary kingdom, strange ghostly literary figures, halls of mirrors, a one-eyed pilot, a curse in Havana, and a bullet lost in Mexico.