A Heart So White

A Heart So White by Javier Marías was first published in 1992 and received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1997. Margaret Jull Costa's English translation was published by New Directions in 2000.

Plot

With unnerving insistence A Heart So White chronicles the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he considers the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy - its possible convenience, its price, an even its civility - permeates the novel. A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence: Marías elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into shadows - and reckons the costs of ambivalence. ('My hands are of your colour; but I shame/To wear a heart so white" - Macbeth.)

Reception

Called "dazzling" by The Times Literary Supplement and "a landmark by a genuine artist" by Le Monde, A Heart So White won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was rated by El Pais as "his best and most ambitious novel."

External links

• "Stranger Than Fiction," by Wendy Lesser, New York Times, May 6, 2001.
• A Heart So White reviewed by Ben Donnelly, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Spring 2001.