Хавьер Мариас: Жизнь и творчество писателя

Spanish novelist, translator, and columnist (1951–2022)

Javier Marías Franco (20 September 1951 – 11 September 2022) was a Spanish author, translator, and columnist. Marías published fifteen novels, including A Heart So White (Corazón tan blanco, 1992) and Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí, 1994). In addition to his novels, he also published three collections of short stories and various essays. As one of Spain's most celebrated novelists, his books have been translated into forty six languages and sold close to nine million copies internationally. He received several awards for his work, such as the Rómulo Gallegos Prize (1995), the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (1997), the International Nonino Prize (2011), and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature (2011). Marías studied philosophy and literature at the Complutense University of Madrid before going on to teach at several universities, including his alma mater, universities in Oxford and Venice, and Wellesley College in Massachusetts. In 1997, he was awarded the title of King of the Kingdom of Redonda by its predecessor Jon Wynne Tyson for his understanding of the kingdom and for mentioning the story of one of its previous kings, John Gawsworth, in his novel All Souls (Todas las almas, 1989).

Javier Marías Franco was born in Madrid on 20 September 1951.). His mother was the writer es. Two of his siblings were art historian lt=Fernando and film critic and economist lt=Miguel. Marías spent parts of his childhood in the United States, where his father taught at various institutions, including Yale University and Wellesley College. His mother died when Javier was 26 years old. He was educated at the Colegio Estudio in Madrid. After having returned to Madrid, Marías studied philosophy and literary sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid from 1968 to 1973. From the 1970s onwards, he was involved in translating English literary works into the Spanish language. His first literary employment consisted of translating Dracula scripts for his maternal uncle, Jesús Franco.

Marías began writing in earnest at an early age. "The Life and Death of Marcelino Iturriaga", one of the short stories in While the Women are Sleeping (2010), was written when he was just 14. He ran away from home to write his first novel and went to live with his uncle in Paris. It was about an American family The novel is dedicated to the Spanish author Juan Benet, who managed to compel the publisher to print the book, and to Vicente Molina Foix, who provided him with the title. His translations included work by Updike, Hardy, Conrad, Nabokov, Faulkner, James, Stevenson, and Browne. In 1979, he won the Spanish national award for translation for his version of Sterne's Tristram Shandy. In 1986, Marías published El hombre sentimental (The Man of Feeling), and in 1989 he published Todas las almas (All Souls), which was set at Oxford University. The Spanish film director Gracia Querejeta released El Último viaje de Robert Rylands (Robert Rylands' Last Journey), adapted from Todas las almas, in 1996. His 1992 novel Corazón tan blanco is centered on Juan, a translator for the United Nations (UN), and its English version A Heart So White was translated by Margaret Jull Costa. It was received well by the literary critics and won the Spanish Critics Award. In his 1994 novel, Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí, the protagonist is a ghostwriter. The protagonists of the novels written since 1986 are all interpreters or translators of one kind or another, based on his own experience as a translator and teacher of translation at Oxford University. Of these protagonists, Marías wrote, "They are people who are renouncing their own voices." In 2009, the trilogy was published as one single volume. It was followed by the novel Los enamoramientos (The Infatuations) in 2011, a story about a woman drawn into a murder mystery. The novel won the state run National novel prize, but Marías rejected the award saying he did not want to be indebted to a government of any kind. He also was a regular contributor to El País, whose editor in chief Pepa Bueno lamented his death and called it a sad day for Spanish literature. In 2005–2006, an English version of his column, "La Zona Fantasma", appeared in the monthly magazine The Believer.

After having been awarded the title, King of Redonda, he was also known as Xavier I. and, from 2000 onwards, Marías operated a small publishing house under the name of Reino de Redonda. Its first book of the publishing house was La mujer de Huguenin by the first King of Redondo and author M. P. Shiel. After "taking the throne" of Redonda, Marías began a publishing imprint named Reino de Redonda ("Kingdom of Redonda"). Marías conferred many titles during his reign upon people he liked, including upon Pedro Almodóvar (Duke of Trémula), António Lobo Antunes (Duke of Cocodrilos), John Ashbery (Duke of Convexo), Pierre Bourdieu (Duke of Desarraigo), William Boyd (Duke of Brazzaville), Jonathan Coe (Duke of Prunes), Luis Antonio de Villena (Duke of Malmundo), and Juan Villoro (Duke of Nochevieja).

Marías died of pneumonia caused by Covid 19 in Madrid on 11 September 2022, at the age of 70. The Spanish novelist Eduardo Mendoza remembered him as the best writer in Spain at the time of his death,

All English translations by Margaret Jull Costa unless otherwise indicated.

Mientras ellas duermen (1990). While the Women Are Sleeping (U. S.: New Directions/UK: Chatto & Windus, 2010)
Cuando fui mortal (1996). When I Was Mortal (The Harvill Press, 1999; New Directions, 2000)
Mala índole (1996). Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico, translated by Esther Allen (New Directions, 2010)

Between Eternities & Other Writings (U. S.: Penguin/UK: Hamish Hamilton, 2017). Later compiled in Spanish as Entre Eternidades. Y otros escritos (2018)