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Dark Back of Time
  • Published: 27 February 2013
  • ISBN: 9780141199894
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $29.99

Dark Back of Time

Formats & editions
EBook
27 Feb 2013
Paperback
27 Feb 2013
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An extraordinary novel, which meditates on the transience, chance and fragility of life, and the way in which reality blurs into fiction

'We lose everything because everything remains except us', says the mysterious narrator of this extraordinary novel, which meditates on the transience, chance and fragility of life, and the way in which reality blurs into fiction. As a man called Javier Marías recalls the strange events and people that shaped his past, including ghostly literary figures, a pilot, an adventurer, a brother who died as a child and the king of an island in the Caribbean, we begin to question the nature of time, memory and reality itself. Here the writer is both a keeper of memories and a purveyor of illusions, destined to be lost in the dark back of time.
  • Published: 27 February 2013
  • ISBN: 9780141199894
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the authors

Javier Marias

Javier Marias was born in 1951. His novels, short stories and essay collections have won a dazzling array of international literary awards. His work has been translated into thirty-four languages and more than five million copies of his books have been sold worldwide. He has held academic posts in Spain, the United States and in Britain, as Lecturer in Spanish Literature at Oxford University and was recently nominated to be a member of the Real Academia de la Lengua Española. He lives in Madrid.
portrait photo of Javier Marias

Javier Marías

Javier Marías was born in Madrid in 1951 and died in 2022. He published fifteen novels, three collections of short stories and several volumes of essays. His work has been translated into forty-three languages and has won a dazzling array of international literary awards, including the prestigious Dublin IMPAC award for A Heart So White. He held academic posts in Spain, the United States and in Britain, as Lecturer in Spanish Literature at Oxford University.
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Praise for Dark Back of Time

Dark Back of Time is one of the best Spanish novels of the twentieth century

Julia Ortega, Brown University

It leaves you with an impression of having been haunted: the most complex, perfect and outstanding of Marias' novels

Reforma

Neither essay nor novel, Javier Marías' most recent book is, quite simply, magnificent. As a book, it is funny, even hilarious, and at times profound, obsessive, and overwhelming.

Le Monde

The author knows how to dive into the formidable chasms of life, fate and death

El Pais

I was enthralled by his strange mix of made-up memories, lost experiences and real-life fantasies

Marina Warner, Guardian

Shows sensitivity in exploring an entire shadowland of human experience just beyond the reach of words, and could be said to be a culminating point in the author's career

The Times Literary Supplement