Uncommonly powerful, endlessly inventive … Part spy thriller, part murder mystery, part cerebral caper.” —Matt Rowland Hill, Literary Review Ho sbagliato l’approccio di partenza perché mi è stato caldamente consigliato come libro sulle spie, argomento di cui in questo periodo sono particolarmente curioso e avido: ma non è un libro di spie, non s’impara nulla sullo spionaggio. Caso mai si potrebbe parlare di estetica dello spionaggio, fenomenologia della spia. Astrazioni, non la vera materia. I have read and enjoyed nine other novels by Marías, some more than others but there is no doubt that this is, to date, his masterpiece. It is by far the longest book of his that I have read, which gives him the opportunity to explore the issues in some considerable detail which I can only touch on in this review. It is a very original and intelligent story. It raises key issues of our time. In particular, it is a book that will stay with you for some time. Publishing history

quinze ans, en classe de première, ils forment un couple précoce: il est robuste, blond, joyeux, insouciant, assez beau gosse, le regard gris.Un esempio a caso, tra le decine che si potrebbero portare: Tomás Nevison è un tipo che fa riflessioni di questo genere: A autenticidade, aliada ao talento narrativo, é uma das grandes virtudes de Marías. Berta Isla é disso um exemplo magnífico.» — J. A. Masoliver Ródenas, La Vanguardia Towards the end of his time in Oxford he has a chat with one of his dons, Peter Wheeler, whom we have met in several other Marías novels, particularly the Tu rostro mañana (Your Face Tomorrow ) trilogy. Wheeler, we know from these books, is not only an Oxford don but also a spymaster and something of a Machiavellian character. Because of Tomás’ linguistic talents, he tries to persuade him to join the spy fraternity. Tomás refuses outright. Very soon afterwards, Tomás is caught up in a most unpleasant incident in which he is essentially told that he risks prison. However, were he to join the spies the matter would be buried. We do not hear his decision but we know, from the rest of the novel, what it is.

Tom nu îi poate dezvălui Bertei realitatea vieții sale secrete. Ea va îndura absențele sale din ce în ce mai lungi până când într-o zi el pleacă și nu se mai întoarce, iar ea este lăsată singură împreună cu doi copii mici pe care trebuie să îi crească. The story is told primarily from Berta’s perspective. For her, the awful situation is knowing that she has a husband who is essentially concealing much of his life from her. She is also dealing with the fact that, when he disappears, he may be dead, a prisoner or just decided to have gone into hiding. In short, she is living a life which is a lie and full of uncertainty. Even when he is there, he seems distracted and morose. The opening sentence of For a certain period, she was not sure that her husband was her husband refers to the fact that this man is not the man (she thought) she married. Other women may well have left him. She does not. The unspoken threat leads Berta to follow foreign news with new eyes. “I still clung to the idea that England was different,” she says, reading up on Northern Ireland, as her anticolonialist instincts rub up against a fear that Tomás, who reluctantly admits he’s a spy without saying where or how, might become the latest high-profile British scalp.This is not a novel about spycraft, the drama of going undercover, or even – despite much allusion to the subject – the moral choices attending the profession of secret agent (we never find out what Tomás’s work actually entails, so it’s impossible to know what moral boundaries he may or may not transgress). Marías is above all interested in negative states: waiting, uncertainty, insignificance, ignorance, deception and self-deception. Throughout the book, he enacts his characters’ various degrees of puzzlement in winding digressions about the mists and vapours that obscure our knowledge of each other and ourselves.

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 wrote his first novel, "Los dominios del lobo" (The Dominions of the Wolf), at age 17, after running away to Paris. Where it pays attention to the complicated mixture of truth and fiction in our everyday lives, Berta Isla is a comfortable home to Sir Peter Russell, a figure who was himself difficult to pin down. An unrelenting critic of historiographical myth making, he also allowed himself the pleasure of living a life that was, by all around him, painted with mythic contours. Typical of his critical rigor, his 2001 biography, Prince Henry, ‘ the Navigator ‘ ruthlessly undermines centuries of historiographic encomia to the Prince, and offers instead a less celebratory account of his success, his genius, and his virtue. By the end of the book, it even begins to seem unlikely that Henry had earned his sobriquet, having designed navigational technology without doing much actual navigating. Despite insisting on the continued significance of the prince, Russell’s account of Henry lays ‘the Navigator’ clinically bare and strips him of the various aggrandizing dishonesties that historians had heaped on him and then repeated unthinkingly.Since the eternity, people were doing just that - waiting for winter to end, for the crops to grow, for a war to end, for a ship to come to shores. More often than not it was women’s fate. Even biologically a woman needs to endure waiting for a child inside of her body. So she knows how to be patient probably better than a man. It does not mean to be passive at all. But it probably means to be loyal and to be hopeful in spite of everything. Berta Isla, aparecida en español en 2017, es una novela del escritor español Javier Marías. [1 ]​ [2 ]​ [3 ]​ Resumen [ editar ] A bestselling author in his native Spain, Marías is often mentioned as a potential candidate for the Nobel prize. 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. Peter Wheeler, who recruits Tomás, and Bertie Tupra, his handler, play significant roles in the other books. Marías succeeds in creating his own fictional world … He continues to validate his well-deserved global reputation.” —Lawrence Olszewski, Library Journal [starred]

Berta Isla, şimdiye kadar -yalnızca birkaç tanesi hariç- bütün kitaplarında gördüğümüz ve Marias’ın etrafında gezinmeyi en çok sevdiği anlatmak, anlatamamak, anlaşılmak, “yarınki yüz”, özellikle de bir evlilikte hayatın gerçek anlamda ne kadarının ortak olduğu üzerinde yükselenen, çevirmen- dil konularına bu sefer bir de gerçek anlamda bir casusluğun eklenerek yükseldiği bir roman. “Amma da çok şey istiyoruz: insanların ille de yüreğini okumak iddiasındayız, en çok da yanımızda uyuyan, yastığımızın yanında soluk alan kişinin.” Javier Marias's latest novel, Berta Isla has been translated into English by his long-term collaborator, the impeccable Margaret Jull Costa. El gran giro en la novela ocurre cuando Berta Isla, hacia 1976, a través de unos amigos, descubre que Tom trabaja para los servicios secretos británicos. Durante ese tiempo, la protagonista está embarazada de su hija Elisa. A thrilling new literary offering from the acclaimed author of The Infatuations and A Heart So White Cum ar fi ca soțul sa plece la muncă și să nu știi niciodată ce face? Minte sau spune adevărul? Cine este el cu adevărat?Initially, trattandosi di un romanzo dello scrittore spagnolo più verboso dai tempi del siglo de oro, potrebbe esser presa come un’involontaria metafora. di sicuro è un buon contrappasso. Seleccionado entre los mejores libros del año en ABC Cultural y La Vanguardia y recomendado por El Periódico y La Razón. Hemingway, que entendió su oficio mejor que nadie, le dijo alguna vez a Marlene Dietrich: “No hay que confundir acción con movimiento”. En las novelas de Javier Marías (o, por mejor decir, en los volúmenes que han ido apareciendo desde Fiebre y lanza), la gente se mueve cada vez menos, pero cada vez pasan más cosas. Y son todas interesantes: todas nos interpelan, nos interrogan, nos sacuden y nos conmueven. Así en Berta Isla, esta novela maravillosa que dialoga con Tu rostro mañana pero también con Así empieza lo malo, esta novela desengañada y a la vez generosa, rica en peripecias y también en epifanías, introspectiva y obsesiva pero capaz de mirar hacia fuera, hacia el mundo convulso, para escrutarlo, investigarlo y permitirnos una comprensión que de otra forma nos estaría vedada.