Dark Back of Time

From one of Spain's greatest writers—and the international bestselling award-winning author of The Infatuations—comes an odyssey into the nature of identity and of time that  weaves together fact and fiction into a completely original and unforgettable hybrid. . Stylish cerebral...Marías is a startling talent...His prose is ambitious ironic philosophical and ultimately compassionate. —The New York TimesCalled 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 Marías 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 à 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. Marías 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.