Berta Isla

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Berta Isla is a companion piece to his Your Face Tomorrow trilogy, set in the world of the British intelligence service; many of the themes and some of the characters recur. When Berta takes over sections of the narration, she expresses herself in the same voice, with its tendency towards repetition and digression. As is the case with many of Marías’s protagonists, Tomás, or Tom, is an individual of many identities. Marías’s intense, sentimentally charged narrative seems to underscore that only the art of the novel is capable of making visible facets of the human condition that seem invisible to the common eye. A stellar student, whose learning of Spanish and English began naturally at home in Madrid, Tomás soon becomes an admired polyglot by his professors at Oxford.

finest novel to date * Alex Clark * Compelling * Tatler * A twisty, thought-provoking tale that puts notions of truth and morality under pitiless scrutiny * The Guardian * elegant, discursive, persuasively vivid novel. Perennials PERENNIALS constant friends A selection of novels, memoirs and more by some of our favourite authors. For instance, Tomás’s tutor “looked straight at Tomás with his blue eyes slightly narrowed, and so penetrating they were like sparks, as if they could not help scrutinising everything with a degree of suspicion, to the point that the blue seemed to metamorphose into yellow, like the eyes of a sleepy, but very alert lion, or perhaps some other feline”. Tomas is determined to evade the agent’s attentions but his fate is sealed by an escalating series of events that will affect the rest of his life – and that of his beloved Berta. The espionage premise is initially enticing, but the real draw is the depth of Marías’s characterization.As a result, identity and deceit take center stage in this narrative along with other recurring topics in Marías’s fiction. Alone in the park with their baby son, she’s buttonholed by a pair of Irish diplomats – so they say – who claim Tomás is an MI6 agent “invading” their country, as one of them spills lighter fluid on the baby’s pram, ready to spark up. While Berta is a fourth or fifth generation madrileña, Tomás is Anglo-Spanish and has an extraordinary gift for languages.

After Michael Ondaatje’s Booker-longlisted Warlight and Kate Atkinson’s Transcription, Javier Marías’s new book is the latest literary novel to take an unexpected approach to the espionage-thriller formula, mixing marital intrigue with a history lesson of late 20th-century conflict. With meticulous insight and understanding of the human soul, Marias examines the urge to change our destiny, and the hopeless exile we bring upon ourselves. Photograph: Katherine Young/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Sixties Madrid, where Berta and Tomás spend their early married life.

Marías, who’s long had a reputation as your favorite author’s favorite author, has lately earned himself a growing readership in the States, and Berta Isla is certainly likely to help the cause. Tomas is determined to evade the agent's attentions but his fate is sealed by an escalating series of events that will affect the rest of his life - and that of his beloved Berta. Moreover, literature is the only tool available for unveiling what lies dormant in our most hidden emotions and our many masks and desires. Elegant … Persuasively vivid … Marías knows that espionage depends on lies and weasely versions of the truth; that sometimes the false stories used to bait the enemy are as important as James Bond heroics. Tom now embarks on a double life, posing as an embassy employee and raising a family in Madrid with Berta while frequently travelling abroad to take part in undercover operations.

At the same time, Berta Isla is a subtle reflection on the nature of fiction and the novel’s ability to serve as a tool to explore the many nuances of human nature. See our Remarkables Archive list for what is no longer in print, but which we are happy to track down. And the years continued to pass and pass, and first, I grew less young, and then, slightly older, I may even have begun to age, although not that much it seems, for I’ve always looked younger than I am, I’m fortunate in that respect and have no complaints, people tend to think I’m at least ten years younger. Both characters first fall in love as youngsters while in high school, but once they are married, Tomás’s schooling will take him to Oxford for a doctoral degree in foreign languages.Marias weaves a thrilling and desolate meditation on the psychic costs of the deep state's dark arts. Having tinkered with the spook-yarn formula in his Your Face Tomorrow trilogy, Marías strips back the action to stage a dialled-up drama of early motherhood, pitting Berta’s experience against her husband’s in a late-night argument over the kitchen table. It is a source of continuing regret to me that I’ve never been approached to be a spy – especially since I came of age during the cold war, speak Russian, and went to boarding school and Cambridge.

Themes, characters and ideas resurface throughout his work, both the standalone novels and the astonishing trilogy ( Your Face Tomorrow). Remarkables REMARKABLES Intriguing, stunning, or otherwise remarkable books These include fine editions, foreign publications that are exceptional for their interest or production, special editions and some first-rate books from very small publishers. When Berta Isla was a schoolgirl, she decided she would marry Tomás Nevinson—the dashing half-Spanish, half-English boy in her class with an extraordinary gift for languages.Berta, we realise, is becoming something she feared as a schoolgirl: someone whose story “did not merit being told by anyone, or only as a fleeting reference when recounting someone else’s more eventful and interesting life”. Remarkables REMARKABLES Intriguing, stunning, or otherwise remarkable books These include fine editions, foreign publications exceptional for their interest or production, special editions and some first-rate books from very small publishers. 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.