- Published: 18 April 2017
- ISBN: 9780241972823
- Imprint: Penguin General UK
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 512
- RRP: $39.99
Thus Bad Begins
- Published: 18 April 2017
- ISBN: 9780241972823
- Imprint: Penguin General UK
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 512
- RRP: $39.99
Marías returns with another masterful tapestry of noir-ish twists and digressive cerebration
The Millions
Elegant and beautiful, reminiscent of Proust... Magnificent
Daily Mail
One of Marias's most enjoyable and accessible novels
Financial Times
Marias is relentless in his pursuit of literary and psychological truth
Sunday Times
Ferociously addictive, troubling [and] seductive... It works as high literary fiction, constantly picking apart our assumptions about story and fiction, but also offering good old-fashioned plot'
Independent
A powerful study of history and memory from a literary giant
Sunday Times
Easily as engrossing as anything he's written before... He manages to tread the tightrope between a very literary fiction and an utterly absorbing plot
The Times
Alfred Hitchcock would be a home with Marias - but so too might Harold Pinter...It's a rare trick to pull off, this combination of suspense, analysis and metaphysics that aims both high at the brow and low at the gut
Prospect
Publisher's description. From one of Spain's most acclaimed literary voices comes a rich and complex portrait of mutual deception, toxic love and cruel, lingering guilt. A youth caught in the middle of someone else's bitter marriage; a beautiful woman scorned; a man torn between conscience and will. Step into the melancholic, unforgiving world of Javier Marías.
Penguin
Erudite, strange, hypnotic and beautiful...One reads Marías for his ability to make the smallest parts of the world come alive
LA Times
Marías is a master of a kind of suspense that is rare in the modern novel
NY Times
A major work from a global talent, Thus Bad Begins knits Hitchcockian suspense into a hypnotic tale crackling with erotic tension and political strife... The personal is political, as Marías' powerful, wide-ranging, yet curiously intimate novel attests
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
On the page, he is expansive and unrestrained
New Yorker
Almodóvar-esque
New York Magazine