Book Review Author: Javier Marias Translated from Spanish by: Margaret Jull Costa Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 2013 Pages: 346 This is a novel that revolves round a murder mystery, but there is not a single police officer or detective in it. There is no investigation of the murder because the murderer is an insane person with a motive. The narrator of the novel, Maria, knows more. There is a cunning person behind the murderer, and Maria learns soon that “the most powerful and most cunning of people never dirty their own hands or their own tongue.” They know how to do the dirty deeds by using other people as instruments. The novel is about such people. The novel is about the prevalence of evil in human life. Right from the beginning of the human civilisation we find the same kind of crimes repeated endlessly, ad nauseam. “The worst thing is that so many disparate individuals in every age and every country – each on his own account and at
Cerebrate and Celebrate