Maras javier (63 resultados)

Paperback. Condición: Good. Twelve short stories by "the most subtle and gifted writer in contemporary Spanish literature" (The Boston Globe)--and the award-winning, international bestselling author of The Infatuations. Victims of mistaken identity, sponging relatives, amateur sleuths, eavesdroppers, professional liars, assassins, and failed bodyguards populate the short stories in When I Was Mortal. Plots turn on curious exigencies--a woman about to star in her first porn film; a night doctor who adds new meaning to "specialist"; a ghost whose neglect is greatly resented. …

Paperback. Condición: Good. With high black humor, a visiting Spanish lecturer bends his gaze over that most British of institutions, Oxford University.

Paperback. Condición: Fair. INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE FINALIST * From the award-winning, internationally bestselling Spanish author of A Heart So White comes an immersive, provocative novel propelled by a seemingly random murder. "Sometimes startling, sometimes hilarious, and always intelligent . Marías [has] a penetrating empathy."--The New York Times Book Review Each day before work María Dolz stops at the same café. There she finds herself drawn to a couple who is also there every morning. Observing their seemingly perfect life helps her escape the listlessness of her own. But when the man is brutally murdered and María approaches the widow to offer her condolences, what began as mere observation turns into an increasingly complicated entanglement. Invited into the widow's home, she meets--and falls in love with--a man who sheds disturbing new light on the crime. As María recounts this story, we are given a murder mystery brilliantly encased in a metaphysical enquiry, a novel that grapples with questions of love and death, chance and coincidence, and above all, with the slippery essence of the truth and how it is told.…

Paperback. Condición: Good. INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE FINALIST * From the award-winning, internationally bestselling Spanish author of A Heart So White comes an immersive, provocative novel propelled by a seemingly random murder. "Sometimes startling, sometimes hilarious, and always intelligent . Marías [has] a penetrating empathy."--The New York Times Book Review Each day before work María Dolz stops at the same café. There she finds herself drawn to a couple who is also there every morning. Observing their seemingly perfect life helps her escape the listlessness of her own. But when the man is brutally murdered and María approaches the widow to offer her condolences, what began as mere observation turns into an increasingly complicated entanglement. Invited into the widow's home, she meets--and falls in love with--a man who sheds disturbing new light on the crime. As María recounts this story, we are given a murder mystery brilliantly encased in a metaphysical enquiry, a novel that grapples with questions of love and death, chance and coincidence, and above all, with the slippery essence of the truth and how it is told.…

Paperback. Condición: Good. A book by one of Spain's greatest writers weaves fiction and fact into a completely original and unforgettable hybrid. Called by its author a false novel, Dark Back of Time begins with the tale of the odd effects of publishing All Souls, his witty and sardonic 1989 Oxford novel. All Souls is a book Mar as swears to be fiction, but which its characters--the real-life dons and professors and bookshop owners who have recognized themselves--fiercely maintain to be a roman clef. With the sleepy world of Oxford set into fretful motion by a world that never existed, Dark Back of Time begins an odyssey into the nature of identity and of time. Mar as weaves together autobiography, a legendary kingdom, strange ghostly literary figures, halls of mirrors, a one-eyed pilot, a curse in Havana, and a bullet lost in Mexico.…

Paperback. Condición: Good. Twelve short stories by "the most subtle and gifted writer in contemporary Spanish literature" (The Boston Globe)--and the award-winning, international bestselling author of The Infatuations. Victims of mistaken identity, sponging relatives, amateur sleuths, eavesdroppers, professional liars, assassins, and failed bodyguards populate the short stories in When I Was Mortal. Plots turn on curious exigencies--a woman about to star in her first porn film; a night doctor who adds new meaning to "specialist"; a ghost whose neglect is greatly resented. …

Paperback. Condición: Good. En los cuentos de Cuando fui mortal se halla, como señaló en su día la crítica, "la oportunidad de abrir la puerta para vislumbrar el universo único de uno de los mejores novelistas contemporáneos". Por aquí se pasea toda una serie de personajes turbadores: un médico español que visita de noche las casas parisinas de mujeres casadas; un guardaespaldas aficionado al hipódromo que deseará que haya muerto el hombre a quien protege; una aspirante a actriz porno que aguarda la sesión de rodaje junto a su compañero de reparto, al que no conoce; un fantasma que padece la maldición máxima de saber ahora cuanto ocurrió en su vida; un hombre y una mujer muertos por una lanza africana en Madrid; una señorita de compañía que lee libros en voz alta a un fantasma al que ama y muchos otros personajes salidos directamente de Corazón tan blanco o Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí, mostrando que los escritores de talento llevan siempre consigo su estilo y su mundo en sus visitas a cualquier género.…

Paperback. Condición: Very Good. Cada ma ana Mar a Dolz contempla en una cafeter a a una pareja a la que no conoce de nada, cuya felicidad intuye y acaso envidia. Este ritual la ayuda a empezar la jornada, hasta que un d a se entera de la muerte del hombre a manos de un enajenado. M s tarde, una relaci n imprevista, quiz imprudente, acerca a Mar a a los pormenores del suceso. El embriagador estado de enamoramiento y las acciones que desencadena, positivas o viles, generosas o ego stas, la impunidad, la presencia casi permanente de los muertos en nuestras vidas, la memoria, la imposibilidad de conocer cabalmente la verdad son algunos de los temas por los que discurre, firme y sinuosa, una de las mejores novelas de su autor.…

Hardback. Condición: Very Good. The final novel from Spain's most acclaimed writer, a novel about a charismatic half-Spanish, half-English man who is recruited by British intelligence - Mar as's best work. --El Pa s Compelling, hypnotic, and exciting at the same time. --Los Angeles Review of Books Retired spy Tom s Nevinson--once an agent for the British Secret Service, now living a quiet life in his hometown, Madrid--is approached by his former handler, Bertram Tupra, with an offer to bring him back in from the cold for one last assignment. The mission: to go undercover again, in a small Spanish town, to find out which of three women who moved there a decade ago is in fact a terrorist trained by the IRA, on the run after masterminding several deadly attacks. Everything about the assignment is shadowy, from exactly who is in charge, to the question of what justice Nevinson will need to mete out once he unmasks the terrorist. But, lured by the appeal of being back on the inside, he accepts the job. Nevinson soon becomes intimately involved with each of the three women. How--or whom--to choose among them? Under increasing pressure, he must choose, and then act . . . Charting a world in which right and wrong, good and evil, are irreparably blurred, Javier Mar as takes us on a journey of rare and unforgettable suspense in this, the final novel written before his untimely passing.…

Hardback. Condición: Good. The final novel from Spain's most acclaimed writer, a novel about a charismatic half-Spanish, half-English man who is recruited by British intelligence - Mar as's best work. --El Pa s Compelling, hypnotic, and exciting at the same time. --Los Angeles Review of Books Retired spy Tom s Nevinson--once an agent for the British Secret Service, now living a quiet life in his hometown, Madrid--is approached by his former handler, Bertram Tupra, with an offer to bring him back in from the cold for one last assignment. The mission: to go undercover again, in a small Spanish town, to find out which of three women who moved there a decade ago is in fact a terrorist trained by the IRA, on the run after masterminding several deadly attacks. Everything about the assignment is shadowy, from exactly who is in charge, to the question of what justice Nevinson will need to mete out once he unmasks the terrorist. But, lured by the appeal of being back on the inside, he accepts the job. Nevinson soon becomes intimately involved with each of the three women. How--or whom--to choose among them? Under increasing pressure, he must choose, and then act . . . Charting a world in which right and wrong, good and evil, are irreparably blurred, Javier Mar as takes us on a journey of rare and unforgettable suspense in this, the final novel written before his untimely passing.…

Hardback. Condición: Fair. The final novel from Spain's most acclaimed writer, a novel about a charismatic half-Spanish, half-English man who is recruited by British intelligence - Mar as's best work. --El Pa s Compelling, hypnotic, and exciting at the same time. --Los Angeles Review of Books Retired spy Tom s Nevinson--once an agent for the British Secret Service, now living a quiet life in his hometown, Madrid--is approached by his former handler, Bertram Tupra, with an offer to bring him back in from the cold for one last assignment. The mission: to go undercover again, in a small Spanish town, to find out which of three women who moved there a decade ago is in fact a terrorist trained by the IRA, on the run after masterminding several deadly attacks. Everything about the assignment is shadowy, from exactly who is in charge, to the question of what justice Nevinson will need to mete out once he unmasks the terrorist. But, lured by the appeal of being back on the inside, he accepts the job. Nevinson soon becomes intimately involved with each of the three women. How--or whom--to choose among them? Under increasing pressure, he must choose, and then act . . . Charting a world in which right and wrong, good and evil, are irreparably blurred, Javier Mar as takes us on a journey of rare and unforgettable suspense in this, the final novel written before his untimely passing.…

Paperback. Condición: Good. Una novela sobre el deseo, el rencor y la arbitrariedad del perdón. Libro del año 2014 según Babelia. Así empieza lo malo cuenta la historia íntima de un matrimonio de muchos años, narrada por su joven testigo cuando este es ya un hombre plenamente adulto. Juan de Vere encuentra su primer empleo como secretario personal de Eduardo Muriel, un antaño exitoso director de cine, en el Madrid de 1980. Su trabajo le permite entrar en la privacidad de la casa familiar y ser espectador de la misteriosa desdicha conyugal entre Muriel y su esposa Beatriz Noguera. Muriel le encarga que investigue y sonsaque a un amigo suyo de media vida, el Doctor Jorge Van Vechten, de cuyo indecente comportamiento en el pasado le han llegado rumores. Pero Juan no se limitará a eso y tomará dudosas iniciativas, porque, como él mismo reconoce desde su edad madura, -los jóvenes tienen el alma y la conciencia aplazadas-. Así descubrirá que no hay justicia desinteresada, sino que está siempre contaminada por el rencor personal y por los propios deseos, y que todo perdón o castigo son arbitrarios. «Es un libro sobre el deseo, como uno de los motores más fuertes en la vida de las personas, que a veces lleva a pasar por encima de cualquier lealtad, consideración e incluso respeto en el trato con los demás. Otro de los temas de la novela es la impunidad y la arbitrariedad del perdón y del no perdón. Cómo la idea de justicia que la gente reclama a veces tiene mucho que ver con que el acto en sí nos afecte o no.» - Javier Marías La crítica ha dicho. «Una magnífica historia sobre el rencor, el peso de los rumores y el pasado que nunca desaparece y clava sus colmillos donde más le duele. En el corazón.» Antonio Fontana, ABC ENGLISH DESCRIPTION From the internationally acclaimed author of The Infatuations comes the mesmerizing story of a couple living in the shadow of a mysterious, unhappy history--a novel about the cruel, tender punishments we exact on those we love.  Madrid, 1980. Juan de Vere, nearly finished with his university degree, takes a job as personal assistant to Eduardo Muriel, an eccentric, once-successful film director. Urbane, discreet, irreproachable, Muriel is an irresistible idol to the young man. But Muriel's voluptuous wife, Beatriz, inhabits their home like an unwanted ghost; and on the periphery of their lives is Dr. Jorge Van Vechten, a family friend implicated in unsavory rumors that Muriel now asks Juan to investigate. As Juan draws closer to the truth, he uncovers only more questions. What is at the root of Muriel's hostility toward his wife? How did Beatriz meet Van Vechten? What happened during the war? Marías leads us deep into the intrigues of these characters, through a daring exploration of rancor, suspicion, loyalty, trust, and the infinitely permeable boundaries between the deceptions perpetrated on us by others and those we inflict upon ourselves. **Named a Best Book of the Year by the Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times**.…

Paperback. Condición: Very Good. Una novela sobre el deseo, el rencor y la arbitrariedad del perdón. Libro del año 2014 según Babelia. Así empieza lo malo cuenta la historia íntima de un matrimonio de muchos años, narrada por su joven testigo cuando este es ya un hombre plenamente adulto. Juan de Vere encuentra su primer empleo como secretario personal de Eduardo Muriel, un antaño exitoso director de cine, en el Madrid de 1980. Su trabajo le permite entrar en la privacidad de la casa familiar y ser espectador de la misteriosa desdicha conyugal entre Muriel y su esposa Beatriz Noguera. Muriel le encarga que investigue y sonsaque a un amigo suyo de media vida, el Doctor Jorge Van Vechten, de cuyo indecente comportamiento en el pasado le han llegado rumores. Pero Juan no se limitará a eso y tomará dudosas iniciativas, porque, como él mismo reconoce desde su edad madura, -los jóvenes tienen el alma y la conciencia aplazadas-. Así descubrirá que no hay justicia desinteresada, sino que está siempre contaminada por el rencor personal y por los propios deseos, y que todo perdón o castigo son arbitrarios. «Es un libro sobre el deseo, como uno de los motores más fuertes en la vida de las personas, que a veces lleva a pasar por encima de cualquier lealtad, consideración e incluso respeto en el trato con los demás. Otro de los temas de la novela es la impunidad y la arbitrariedad del perdón y del no perdón. Cómo la idea de justicia que la gente reclama a veces tiene mucho que ver con que el acto en sí nos afecte o no.» - Javier Marías La crítica ha dicho. «Una magnífica historia sobre el rencor, el peso de los rumores y el pasado que nunca desaparece y clava sus colmillos donde más le duele. En el corazón.» Antonio Fontana, ABC ENGLISH DESCRIPTION From the internationally acclaimed author of The Infatuations comes the mesmerizing story of a couple living in the shadow of a mysterious, unhappy history--a novel about the cruel, tender punishments we exact on those we love.  Madrid, 1980. Juan de Vere, nearly finished with his university degree, takes a job as personal assistant to Eduardo Muriel, an eccentric, once-successful film director. Urbane, discreet, irreproachable, Muriel is an irresistible idol to the young man. But Muriel's voluptuous wife, Beatriz, inhabits their home like an unwanted ghost; and on the periphery of their lives is Dr. Jorge Van Vechten, a family friend implicated in unsavory rumors that Muriel now asks Juan to investigate. As Juan draws closer to the truth, he uncovers only more questions. What is at the root of Muriel's hostility toward his wife? How did Beatriz meet Van Vechten? What happened during the war? Marías leads us deep into the intrigues of these characters, through a daring exploration of rancor, suspicion, loyalty, trust, and the infinitely permeable boundaries between the deceptions perpetrated on us by others and those we inflict upon ourselves. **Named a Best Book of the Year by the Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times**. …

Paperback. Condición: Good. With high black humor, a visiting Spanish lecturer bends his gaze over that most British of institutions, Oxford University.

Paperback. Condición: Fair. INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE FINALIST * From the award-winning, internationally bestselling Spanish author of A Heart So White comes an immersive, provocative novel propelled by a seemingly random murder. "Sometimes startling, sometimes hilarious, and always intelligent . Marías [has] a penetrating empathy."--The New York Times Book Review Each day before work María Dolz stops at the same café. There she finds herself drawn to a couple who is also there every morning. Observing their seemingly perfect life helps her escape the listlessness of her own. But when the man is brutally murdered and María approaches the widow to offer her condolences, what began as mere observation turns into an increasingly complicated entanglement. Invited into the widow's home, she meets--and falls in love with--a man who sheds disturbing new light on the crime. As María recounts this story, we are given a murder mystery brilliantly encased in a metaphysical enquiry, a novel that grapples with questions of love and death, chance and coincidence, and above all, with the slippery essence of the truth and how it is told.…

Paperback. Condición: Good. INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE FINALIST * From the award-winning, internationally bestselling Spanish author of A Heart So White comes an immersive, provocative novel propelled by a seemingly random murder. "Sometimes startling, sometimes hilarious, and always intelligent . Marías [has] a penetrating empathy."--The New York Times Book Review Each day before work María Dolz stops at the same café. There she finds herself drawn to a couple who is also there every morning. Observing their seemingly perfect life helps her escape the listlessness of her own. But when the man is brutally murdered and María approaches the widow to offer her condolences, what began as mere observation turns into an increasingly complicated entanglement. Invited into the widow's home, she meets--and falls in love with--a man who sheds disturbing new light on the crime. As María recounts this story, we are given a murder mystery brilliantly encased in a metaphysical enquiry, a novel that grapples with questions of love and death, chance and coincidence, and above all, with the slippery essence of the truth and how it is told.…

Paperback. Condición: Good. A book by one of Spain's greatest writers weaves fiction and fact into a completely original and unforgettable hybrid. Called by its author a false novel, Dark Back of Time begins with the tale of the odd effects of publishing All Souls, his witty and sardonic 1989 Oxford novel. All Souls is a book Mar as swears to be fiction, but which its characters--the real-life dons and professors and bookshop owners who have recognized themselves--fiercely maintain to be a roman clef. With the sleepy world of Oxford set into fretful motion by a world that never existed, Dark Back of Time begins an odyssey into the nature of identity and of time. Mar as weaves together autobiography, a legendary kingdom, strange ghostly literary figures, halls of mirrors, a one-eyed pilot, a curse in Havana, and a bullet lost in Mexico.…

Paperback. Condición: Very Good. Cada ma ana Mar a Dolz contempla en una cafeter a a una pareja a la que no conoce de nada, cuya felicidad intuye y acaso envidia. Este ritual la ayuda a empezar la jornada, hasta que un d a se entera de la muerte del hombre a manos de un enajenado. M s tarde, una relaci n imprevista, quiz imprudente, acerca a Mar a a los pormenores del suceso. El embriagador estado de enamoramiento y las acciones que desencadena, positivas o viles, generosas o ego stas, la impunidad, la presencia casi permanente de los muertos en nuestras vidas, la memoria, la imposibilidad de conocer cabalmente la verdad son algunos de los temas por los que discurre, firme y sinuosa, una de las mejores novelas de su autor.…

Paperback. Condición: Good. En los cuentos de Cuando fui mortal se halla, como señaló en su día la crítica, "la oportunidad de abrir la puerta para vislumbrar el universo único de uno de los mejores novelistas contemporáneos". Por aquí se pasea toda una serie de personajes turbadores: un médico español que visita de noche las casas parisinas de mujeres casadas; un guardaespaldas aficionado al hipódromo que deseará que haya muerto el hombre a quien protege; una aspirante a actriz porno que aguarda la sesión de rodaje junto a su compañero de reparto, al que no conoce; un fantasma que padece la maldición máxima de saber ahora cuanto ocurrió en su vida; un hombre y una mujer muertos por una lanza africana en Madrid; una señorita de compañía que lee libros en voz alta a un fantasma al que ama y muchos otros personajes salidos directamente de Corazón tan blanco o Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí, mostrando que los escritores de talento llevan siempre consigo su estilo y su mundo en sus visitas a cualquier género.…

Hardback. Condición: Very Good. The final novel from Spain's most acclaimed writer, a novel about a charismatic half-Spanish, half-English man who is recruited by British intelligence - Mar as's best work. --El Pa s Compelling, hypnotic, and exciting at the same time. --Los Angeles Review of Books Retired spy Tom s Nevinson--once an agent for the British Secret Service, now living a quiet life in his hometown, Madrid--is approached by his former handler, Bertram Tupra, with an offer to bring him back in from the cold for one last assignment. The mission: to go undercover again, in a small Spanish town, to find out which of three women who moved there a decade ago is in fact a terrorist trained by the IRA, on the run after masterminding several deadly attacks. Everything about the assignment is shadowy, from exactly who is in charge, to the question of what justice Nevinson will need to mete out once he unmasks the terrorist. But, lured by the appeal of being back on the inside, he accepts the job. Nevinson soon becomes intimately involved with each of the three women. How--or whom--to choose among them? Under increasing pressure, he must choose, and then act . . . Charting a world in which right and wrong, good and evil, are irreparably blurred, Javier Mar as takes us on a journey of rare and unforgettable suspense in this, the final novel written before his untimely passing.…

Hardback. Condición: Fair. The final novel from Spain's most acclaimed writer, a novel about a charismatic half-Spanish, half-English man who is recruited by British intelligence - Mar as's best work. --El Pa s Compelling, hypnotic, and exciting at the same time. --Los Angeles Review of Books Retired spy Tom s Nevinson--once an agent for the British Secret Service, now living a quiet life in his hometown, Madrid--is approached by his former handler, Bertram Tupra, with an offer to bring him back in from the cold for one last assignment. The mission: to go undercover again, in a small Spanish town, to find out which of three women who moved there a decade ago is in fact a terrorist trained by the IRA, on the run after masterminding several deadly attacks. Everything about the assignment is shadowy, from exactly who is in charge, to the question of what justice Nevinson will need to mete out once he unmasks the terrorist. But, lured by the appeal of being back on the inside, he accepts the job. Nevinson soon becomes intimately involved with each of the three women. How--or whom--to choose among them? Under increasing pressure, he must choose, and then act . . . Charting a world in which right and wrong, good and evil, are irreparably blurred, Javier Mar as takes us on a journey of rare and unforgettable suspense in this, the final novel written before his untimely passing.…

Hardback. Condición: Good. The final novel from Spain's most acclaimed writer, a novel about a charismatic half-Spanish, half-English man who is recruited by British intelligence - Mar as's best work. --El Pa s Compelling, hypnotic, and exciting at the same time. --Los Angeles Review of Books Retired spy Tom s Nevinson--once an agent for the British Secret Service, now living a quiet life in his hometown, Madrid--is approached by his former handler, Bertram Tupra, with an offer to bring him back in from the cold for one last assignment. The mission: to go undercover again, in a small Spanish town, to find out which of three women who moved there a decade ago is in fact a terrorist trained by the IRA, on the run after masterminding several deadly attacks. Everything about the assignment is shadowy, from exactly who is in charge, to the question of what justice Nevinson will need to mete out once he unmasks the terrorist. But, lured by the appeal of being back on the inside, he accepts the job. Nevinson soon becomes intimately involved with each of the three women. How--or whom--to choose among them? Under increasing pressure, he must choose, and then act . . . Charting a world in which right and wrong, good and evil, are irreparably blurred, Javier Mar as takes us on a journey of rare and unforgettable suspense in this, the final novel written before his untimely passing.…

Paperback. Condición: Very Good. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condición: Very Good. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condición: Fair. A readable copy of the book which may include some defects such as highlighting and notes. Cover and pages may be creased and show discolouration.

Paperback. Condición: Very Good. Una novela sobre el deseo, el rencor y la arbitrariedad del perdón. Libro del año 2014 según Babelia. Así empieza lo malo cuenta la historia íntima de un matrimonio de muchos años, narrada por su joven testigo cuando este es ya un hombre plenamente adulto. Juan de Vere encuentra su primer empleo como secretario personal de Eduardo Muriel, un antaño exitoso director de cine, en el Madrid de 1980. Su trabajo le permite entrar en la privacidad de la casa familiar y ser espectador de la misteriosa desdicha conyugal entre Muriel y su esposa Beatriz Noguera. Muriel le encarga que investigue y sonsaque a un amigo suyo de media vida, el Doctor Jorge Van Vechten, de cuyo indecente comportamiento en el pasado le han llegado rumores. Pero Juan no se limitará a eso y tomará dudosas iniciativas, porque, como él mismo reconoce desde su edad madura, -los jóvenes tienen el alma y la conciencia aplazadas-. Así descubrirá que no hay justicia desinteresada, sino que está siempre contaminada por el rencor personal y por los propios deseos, y que todo perdón o castigo son arbitrarios. «Es un libro sobre el deseo, como uno de los motores más fuertes en la vida de las personas, que a veces lleva a pasar por encima de cualquier lealtad, consideración e incluso respeto en el trato con los demás. Otro de los temas de la novela es la impunidad y la arbitrariedad del perdón y del no perdón. Cómo la idea de justicia que la gente reclama a veces tiene mucho que ver con que el acto en sí nos afecte o no.» - Javier Marías La crítica ha dicho. «Una magnífica historia sobre el rencor, el peso de los rumores y el pasado que nunca desaparece y clava sus colmillos donde más le duele. En el corazón.» Antonio Fontana, ABC ENGLISH DESCRIPTION From the internationally acclaimed author of The Infatuations comes the mesmerizing story of a couple living in the shadow of a mysterious, unhappy history--a novel about the cruel, tender punishments we exact on those we love.  Madrid, 1980. Juan de Vere, nearly finished with his university degree, takes a job as personal assistant to Eduardo Muriel, an eccentric, once-successful film director. Urbane, discreet, irreproachable, Muriel is an irresistible idol to the young man. But Muriel's voluptuous wife, Beatriz, inhabits their home like an unwanted ghost; and on the periphery of their lives is Dr. Jorge Van Vechten, a family friend implicated in unsavory rumors that Muriel now asks Juan to investigate. As Juan draws closer to the truth, he uncovers only more questions. What is at the root of Muriel's hostility toward his wife? How did Beatriz meet Van Vechten? What happened during the war? Marías leads us deep into the intrigues of these characters, through a daring exploration of rancor, suspicion, loyalty, trust, and the infinitely permeable boundaries between the deceptions perpetrated on us by others and those we inflict upon ourselves. **Named a Best Book of the Year by the Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times**. …

Paperback. Condición: Good. Una novela sobre el deseo, el rencor y la arbitrariedad del perdón. Libro del año 2014 según Babelia. Así empieza lo malo cuenta la historia íntima de un matrimonio de muchos años, narrada por su joven testigo cuando este es ya un hombre plenamente adulto. Juan de Vere encuentra su primer empleo como secretario personal de Eduardo Muriel, un antaño exitoso director de cine, en el Madrid de 1980. Su trabajo le permite entrar en la privacidad de la casa familiar y ser espectador de la misteriosa desdicha conyugal entre Muriel y su esposa Beatriz Noguera. Muriel le encarga que investigue y sonsaque a un amigo suyo de media vida, el Doctor Jorge Van Vechten, de cuyo indecente comportamiento en el pasado le han llegado rumores. Pero Juan no se limitará a eso y tomará dudosas iniciativas, porque, como él mismo reconoce desde su edad madura, -los jóvenes tienen el alma y la conciencia aplazadas-. Así descubrirá que no hay justicia desinteresada, sino que está siempre contaminada por el rencor personal y por los propios deseos, y que todo perdón o castigo son arbitrarios. «Es un libro sobre el deseo, como uno de los motores más fuertes en la vida de las personas, que a veces lleva a pasar por encima de cualquier lealtad, consideración e incluso respeto en el trato con los demás. Otro de los temas de la novela es la impunidad y la arbitrariedad del perdón y del no perdón. Cómo la idea de justicia que la gente reclama a veces tiene mucho que ver con que el acto en sí nos afecte o no.» - Javier Marías La crítica ha dicho. «Una magnífica historia sobre el rencor, el peso de los rumores y el pasado que nunca desaparece y clava sus colmillos donde más le duele. En el corazón.» Antonio Fontana, ABC ENGLISH DESCRIPTION From the internationally acclaimed author of The Infatuations comes the mesmerizing story of a couple living in the shadow of a mysterious, unhappy history--a novel about the cruel, tender punishments we exact on those we love.  Madrid, 1980. Juan de Vere, nearly finished with his university degree, takes a job as personal assistant to Eduardo Muriel, an eccentric, once-successful film director. Urbane, discreet, irreproachable, Muriel is an irresistible idol to the young man. But Muriel's voluptuous wife, Beatriz, inhabits their home like an unwanted ghost; and on the periphery of their lives is Dr. Jorge Van Vechten, a family friend implicated in unsavory rumors that Muriel now asks Juan to investigate. As Juan draws closer to the truth, he uncovers only more questions. What is at the root of Muriel's hostility toward his wife? How did Beatriz meet Van Vechten? What happened during the war? Marías leads us deep into the intrigues of these characters, through a daring exploration of rancor, suspicion, loyalty, trust, and the infinitely permeable boundaries between the deceptions perpetrated on us by others and those we inflict upon ourselves. **Named a Best Book of the Year by the Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times**.…

Paperback. Condición: Very Good. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condición: Fair. A readable copy of the book which may include some defects such as highlighting and notes. Cover and pages may be creased and show discolouration.

Paperback. Condición: Good. The book has been read but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. Some minor wear to the spine.