Javier Marías

Javier Marías was born in Madrid in 1951, the son of the philosopher Julian Marías, who had been briefly imprisoned by the Franco regime. He grew up in an intellectual household where several languages were spoken, an experience that deeply informed his later fiction's preoccupation with translation and the gaps between what is said and what is meant. He published his first novel at the age of nineteen and spent time teaching at Oxford, where he developed his deep engagement with English literature, particularly Shakespeare. He also taught at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and worked as a translator, rendering works by Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others into Spanish. This author hub collects 1 work in the Canon Compass ranking, led by A Heart So White.