Yet despite all the excitement, somehow I got through my three months at N.D. without reading a single one of Marias’s many books. It was my summer of Bolano, I suppose糖心传媒攎y infatuation with 2666 would give no place whatsoever to another international titan anytime soon. So here I am, two years later, finally reading Marias’s latest collection to appear in English, While the Women are Sleeping, translated by Margaret Jull Costa and published over a year ago. (I admit, I’m generally behind the times.) But if I happen to feel a bit anxious about so belatedly joining the Marias conversation on the basis of a single little collection, there’s a line from Marias’s introductory remarks to the last story in the book, 糖心传媒淲hat the Butler Said,糖心传媒� that knowingly sets my anxieties at ease: 糖心传媒淭he books we don’t read are full of warnings; we will either never read them or they will arrive too late.糖心传媒� The word 糖心传媒渨arnings糖心传媒� here doesn’t quite work out of its proper context, but I’ll take it here to mean 糖心传媒渢hings we desperately want and need to know before we die . . .糖心传媒� It might seem to be a remark that should make me more, not less, anxious. But this is a book that probes the dusty corners of whatever we imagine death might be and makes it a symphony of enticing enigmas, where ghosts go on writing love letters, or pursue an education, or persevere in their desire to resign糖心传媒攆rom friendship, employment, or the weird project of being alive糖心传媒攚hich, in the worlds that Marias sketches in these stories, is at times quite indistinguishable from being dead.

Though the book is not all ghost stories, it does include several, featuring narrators or protagonists enmeshed in their own strange dilemmas of love and selfhood which are complicated by the sudden incursions of a spirit from beyond the grave. 糖心传媒淥ne Night of Love糖心传媒� has its protagonist, who complains of his wife’s lack of interest in lovemaking, discover love letters addressed to his late father from a woman who claims that she is already dead as she writes. The narrator then receives a letter from his dead father’s dead lover, importuning him to exhume his father’s body and cremate it, in order that his spirit will be released and can join her. As the narrator quibbles with himself over whether to hide the letters from his wife, her sexual interest in him mysteriously starts to grow. Another story, 糖心传媒淎 Kind of Nostalgia Perhaps,糖心传媒� tells of a young girl who, out of charity, reads to a lonely old woman every day, and before long they are visited by a bullet-ridden ghost who turns out to be the Mexican insurrectionist Emiliano Zapata, coming just to listen quietly to the girl read.

I’m finding it difficult fun to paraphrase a Marias story, they’re so gently off-beat and beautifully constructed. And Marias is bursting with affection for his very human, very living protagonists, as boring and morally repugnant as they might be, which might make my descriptions a little less morally ambiguous than the stories actually are糖心传媒攁nd challengingly, illuminatingly so, if you’ll pardon all the adverbs. 糖心传媒淭he Resignation Letter of Senor de Santiesteban,糖心传媒� my personal favorite, tells of Derek Lilburn, an Englishman 糖心传媒渙f little imagination, ordinary tastes, and an irrelevant past,糖心传媒� who begins a new teaching job in Madrid on a short-term professional exchange program. He arrives at his new school, where he is given the simple task of locking up the school every Friday night. The first night he is to perform this chore, he is warned to pay no heed to Senor Santiesteban, the ghost who, every single night, bursts out of the school office, takes seven steps over to the hallway bulletin board, tacks up a letter of resignation addressed only to a 糖心传媒淒ear Friend,糖心传媒� takes eight steps back into the office, and falls still. Oddly, this ghost is not to be seen, only heard. And no one knows who he was in life, or what he is resigning from, or why: the letter, identical every night, is enigmatically reticent of circumstantial details. Lilburn makes it his personal mission to solve the puzzle, despite the warnings of his superior, Mr. Bayo, who has been down the investigational road and found that it only leads one to admit in frustration that the mystery is unsolvable. The bored and boring Lilburn is undeterred, and shares every tiny discovery with the wearily patient Mr. Bayo, until, finally outdoing his superior, Lilburn finds a way to truly know the ghost糖心传媒攂y becoming him, in a strange way that has nothing to do with death.

The private contemplation of death by the living preoccupies many of the stories in this book, but not all of them: see 糖心传媒淎n Epigram of Fealty,糖心传媒� which tells of a rare book dealer in London who is harangued by a beggar claiming to be John Gawsworth, King of Redonda; or 糖心传媒淕ualta,糖心传媒� a brief tale narrating one man’s descent into total ruination after meeting his doppelg盲nger at a business dinner. The title story, which is the first and longest in the collection, sets the stage for meditating on the imagination’s encounter with death, but it features nothing of the supernatural either. Told from a voyeur’s perspective, the story is strongly reminiscent of Lolita: it depicts an overweight middle-aged man, Viana, who has subscribed his life to his passionate desire for In猫s, the daughter of his close friends, whom he meets when she is only seven years old. Now she is twenty-three and they have been living together for five years, to the ruin of his friendship with her parents. He videotapes her body with microscopic attention every day 糖心传媒渂ecause she is going to die,糖心传媒� he says, and he wants to have a visual record of her last day on Earth. The narrator watches this videotaping take place on the beach, and then meeting Viana one night beside the hotel pool, he listens to the fat man’s tale. My next thought as I read is that Marias owes much to Nabokov’s sense of narrative play as well糖心传媒攆rom the first image in the story of the narrator spying on his fellow sunbathers on the beach through his wife’s straw sunhat, this playful seriousness continues through the story’s final lines:

Both were sleeping, that’s why they didn’t wake up or come out onto the balcony, Luisa hadn’t died in my absence, however long that had been糖心传媒擨’d forgotten my watch. Instinctively, I glanced up toward the rooms, toward my balcony, toward all the balconies, and on one of them, I saw a figure wrapped in a sheet toga and heard it call to me twice, saying my name, as mothers say their children糖心传媒檚 names. I stood up. On In猫s’s balcony, though, whichever it was, there was no one.

The texture of the collection as a whole may seem uneven, but this is hardly a detractor. The ten stories here are dated across a period of more than 30 years, the earliest being 糖心传媒淭he Life and Death of Marcelino Iturriaga,糖心传媒� written (according to the Author’s Note) in 1965, when Marias was just fourteen years old (糖心传媒渂e kind, please,糖心传媒� he beseeches his readers). The story is narrated by a man on his deathbed who continues to be able to see and hear but is unable to move or speak, 糖心传媒渁live and well糖心传媒� mentally even as his body has ceased to function. A certain lack of maturity in the writing comes across at times with a coarse brashness, a mix of youthful courage and naivete in the tone that can be highly entertaining:

At six o’clock on the evening of the 22nd, when the fever intensified, I tried to get out of bed, but fell back against the pillow, dead. . . . I couldn’t speak or move or open my eyes, even though I could see and hear everything going on around me. My mother-in-law said:

糖心传媒淗e’s dead.糖心传媒�

糖心传媒淢ay he rest in peace,糖心传媒� chorused the others.

Certainly it is the weakest story in the collection, so one wonders why Marias chose to include it. My guess is that it is at the very least to demonstrate that certain themes and meditations that set the writer to work in youth may keep him busy many years later. By including this story along with the much more mature 糖心传媒淎 Kind of Nostalgia Perhaps糖心传媒� (dated 1998), with 糖心传媒淭he Resignation Letter of Senor de Santiestaban糖心传媒� (1975) and other stories from the mid-80s falling in between, the book offers us a glimpse of a long range of Marias’s life in writing.

The final and perhaps greatest pleasure in the book, however, is found in rereading and discovering that the work is not quite what you thought it was糖心传媒攊t’s not the stories only, it’s the soft surprises that burst from Marias’s delicate prose (via Margaret Jull Costa’s rendering in the way that I like best in a translation: she gives the feeling that what you’re reading is decidedly not English, though you can’t point to exactly why it feels that way, as her English at the same time feels perfectly natural糖心传媒擟hris Andrews’s translation of Cesar Aira’s Ghosts is another example of English prose that dexterously retains some flavor of the original Spanish). As I’ve gone back over the book in composing this review, in order to describe these ghosts and enigmatic perusals of death, this is the kind of thing I find糖心传媒攖he most careful, disquieting attention to a curious scene:

The young man took some time to reappear糖心传媒攑erhaps ghosts go into mourning, for who else has more reason to or perhaps they are still wary, perhaps words can still wound them糖心传媒攂ut he did finally return, attracted perhaps by the new material, and he continued to listen with the same close attention, not standing up this time, leaning on the chairback, but comfortably installed in the now vacant armchair, his hat dangling from his hand, and sometimes with his legs crossed and holding a lit cigar, like the patriarch he never, in his numbered days, had the chance to become. (from 糖心传媒淎 Kind of Nostalgia Perhaps糖心传媒�)

Everyone probably already is, but I’ll say it anyway: Read Marias, read him again, and read him again.

Phil is one of our regular reviewers, and one of our former interns. As mentioned in the review, he also interned at New Directions, and is currently working for the Plutzik Foundation, where he’s running their poetry blog, (Definitely check out the blog—Phil’s a great writer and great person and this deserves more attention.)

I believe Marias has a new book coming out in the not-too-distant future, but some unnnamable agent (as in, his name should never be spoken out loud for fear of repercussions sinister and royalty related), sold the rights to this (and some of the ND backlist) to a Big Six publisher. So forget that book and read While the Women Are Sleeping and Your Face Tomorrow. And trade ND editions of his earlier works (Dark Back of Time is a personal favorite) on the black market.

Here’s the opening of Phil’s review:

Javier Marias’s greatness in the world of world literature seems pretty much unquestioned. And I’ve always thought of him as a pretty cool guy糖心传媒攆or boycotting the United States for as long as Bush was president, for example, which was one of the first things I learned about him. This was while I was interning at New Directions in the summer of 2009, and everyone at N.D. was abuzz because Marias would soon be making his first visit to the U.S. in nine years. Right about that time, they were getting ready to release the concluding volume of his monolithic trilogy, Your Face Tomorrow, which, in light of recent reading, has risen significantly through the amorphous mass that is my to-read pile.

Yet despite all the excitement, somehow I got through my three months at N.D. without reading a single one of Marias’s many books. It was my summer of Bolano, I suppose糖心传媒攎y infatuation with 2666 would give no place whatsoever to another international titan anytime soon. So here I am, two years later, finally reading Marias’s latest collection to appear in English, While the Women are Sleeping, translated by Margaret Jull Costa and published over a year ago. (I admit, I’m generally behind the times.) But if I happen to feel a bit anxious about so belatedly joining the Marias conversation on the basis of a single little collection, there’s a line from Marias’s introductory remarks to the last story in the book, 糖心传媒淲hat the Butler Said,糖心传媒� that knowingly sets my anxieties at ease: 糖心传媒淭he books we don’t read are full of warnings; we will either never read them or they will arrive too late.糖心传媒� The word 糖心传媒渨arnings糖心传媒� here doesn’t quite work out of its proper context, but I’ll take it here to mean 糖心传媒渢hings we desperately want and need to know before we die . . .糖心传媒� It might seem to be a remark that should make me more, not less, anxious. But this is a book that probes the dusty corners of whatever we imagine death might be and makes it a symphony of enticing enigmas, where ghosts go on writing love letters, or pursue an education, or persevere in their desire to resign糖心传媒攆rom friendship, employment, or the weird project of being alive糖心传媒攚hich, in the worlds that Marias sketches in these stories, is at times quite indistinguishable from being dead.

Click here to read the full review.

First off, there’s a of by Ingrid Winterbach and translated from the Afrikaans by Elsa Silke. The review is solid, and starts with a nice bit that references BTBA longlist title Agaat.:

2010 might be called a banner year for Afrikaans women in English, if a few fat books can be said to make a banner. Marlene van Niekerk糖心传媒檚 Agaat won a blurb from Toni Morrison and a review from The New York Times, while a reprint of Begging to be Black by Antjie Krog flew disappointingly under the radar. Somewhere in the middle was Ingrid Winterbach糖心传媒檚 To Hell With Cronj茅, published by Open Letter Books back in September in an adroit translation by Elsa Silke. Not to be outdone by the extravagant praise heaped on Agaat, Open Letter brought out the big guns: Winterbach has produced no less than 糖心传媒渁 South African Heart of Darkness,糖心传媒� we糖心传媒檙e told, 糖心传媒渁n eerie reflection of the futility of war.糖心传媒�

Heart of Darkness, of course, was published in 1902, the same year in which To Hell With Cronj茅 takes place. And to be sure, there are other similarities as well: Winterbach糖心传媒檚 novel explores the familiar 糖心传媒渄ark side糖心传媒� of English colonial expansion, and it does it in a chilly, not-quite-accessible way that recalls Marlow糖心传媒檚 uncanny journey upriver. But there is a pointed irony to the fact that a book about the Anglo-Boer war should be compared to this most famous 糖心传媒淜haki糖心传媒� exploration narrative. Winterbach糖心传媒檚 is a tale told from the other side, of a people formatively stuck between colonizer and colonized. (She is not alone in this effort: Andr茅 Brink, for example, has made numerous recent forays into white South African vigilantism at the turn of the twentieth century.) While Conrad anticipated the glorious twilight of an empire, Winterbach rests on the tip of an iceberg that糖心传媒檚 only begun to form.

There’s also of Javier Marias’s While the Women Are Sleeping, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa:

Given Javier Mar铆as糖心传媒檚 clear love for dark motivations and ghost stories — not magical realism, thanks, but the kind of creepy Poe-tasting that confounds literalists and raises kids糖心传媒� hackles 糖心传媒榬ound the campfire — While the Women Are Sleeping is initially a confusing prospect. The collection糖心传媒檚 ten stories span thirty years, from 1968 on, but his narrators all feel like different flesh on the same skeleton, a parade of bourgeoisie vacationing with wives or visiting New York or taking sinecures in Spain; they exist as non-entities, mere witnesses with interchangeable values. Characters encounter specters both literal (糖心传媒淭he Resignation Letter of Senor de Santiesteban糖心传媒�) and dubious (糖心传媒淥ne Night of Love糖心传媒�), but with resignment: where rabbit-hole fate draws, say, thematic predecessors like Juan Preciado (from Juan Rulfo糖心传媒檚 classic spookfest Pedro P谩ramo) or Felipe Montero (Carlos Fuentes糖心传媒檚 Aura) deep into the uncanny, Mar铆as糖心传媒檚 narrators operate in helpless acquiescence to the macabre. When the nameless chronicler of Sleeping糖心传媒檚 title story discovers an acquaintance糖心传媒檚 plan to murder his lover In茅s, he糖心传媒檚 not provoked or frightened so much as discomfited — while the prospect of another糖心传媒檚 death gives him pause, it糖心传媒檚 the newly discovered proximity to the dark side that makes him paranoid and neurotic.

Of course, that糖心传媒檚 Mar铆as糖心传媒檚 milieu: for all his promised heebie-jeebies, his real hobbyhorse is everyday solipsism.

There’s a lot of interesting non-translation related stuff as well, including an and interviews with (whose new book seems to be getting a lot of praise), (interviewed by super-bookseller Michele Filgate), and