In twenty-odd short essays, Marías tells the lives of famous authors, as if they were fictional characters. His technique is to capture each writer in a characteristic pose. Malcolm Lowry is ‘beset by calamity’, Nabokov is ‘in raptures’, Thomas Mann is ‘in his suffering’ and Robert Louis Stevenson is ‘among criminals’. Javier Marías writes in his foreword that ‘although I have enjoyed writing all my books, this was the one with which I had the most fun.’

Canongate Books Ltd | Paperback |ISBN: 9781841958866