Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me [Hardcover]

Javier Marias (Author), Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1997

Published throughout Europe to widespread acclaim and prestigious awards, Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me is by turns haunting and funny. As suspenseful as a masterfully crafted mystery, it is also a subtle and complex narrative sure to capture the minds and imaginations of readers everywhere. Here is a dazzling novel about an assignation gone awry and a man trapped by a terrible secret.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Keeping secrets proves to be very difficult in this suspenseful Spanish novel, winner of the IX Premio Internacional De Novela Romula Gallegos and the Prix Femina du Meilleur Livre 'Etranger and Marias's third novel to be published in English (following A Heart So White, HarperCollins World, 1996). Victor has planned a romantic evening with a married woman whose husband is away on business. Dinner is over, the young son is finally put to bed, Victor and Marta retire to her bedroom, where she quickly becomes ill and dies in Victor's arms. Should he call her family and admit he was there? How will Marta's elderly father take the news? Eventually, Victor and Marta's husband share their secrets of dealing with wives and lovers in a climactic ending. Despite some long-winded paragraphs that run on for several pages, this is recommended for collections where foreign authors are popular.?Lisa Rohrbaugh, East Palestine Memorial P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Another intriguing psychodrama of sex, guilt, and social satire from the prize-winning Spanish author whose fiction in English translation includes All Souls and A Heart So White (both 1996). First published in 1994, this novel (which has itself won major international literary awards) explores the engagingly dysfunctional mind and heart of Victor Frances, a successful screenwriter, and a bland usurper of things and people that don't belong to him--not unlike Shakespeare's Richard III (the source of Mar¡as's exceedingly witty title). The novel begins with a bang, so to speak, when Victor's mistress Marta De n dies of a heart attack in bed, precluding their usual lovemaking--and it then spins off into amusingly unpredictable directions as Victor observes Marta's funeral from a safe distance, then eludes the suspicions of her angrily bereaved family (most notably Marta's husband Eduardo, who pursues, Javert-like, his late wife's unknown lover). Mar¡as's portrayal of Victor is convincingly complex. Before absconding from his love nest, he prepares breakfast for Marta's sleeping two-year- old son. And, in a dazzling comic scene, Victor (who's inexplicably drawn toward intimacy with Marta's distraught family) patiently endures the near-lunatic ravings of Marta's self-important father Don Juan Tellez. Further delicious complications are added by Victor's ongoing and deeply confused d‚tente with his ex-wife Celia. Unfortunately, all these splendidly handled elements are subsumed in the thick rhetorical fog cast over the novel by Victor's exhaustively extended digressive monologues, which are filled with apposite but monotonous Shakespearean quotations, many of which take the form of long nonstop sentences and paragraphs. There's a brilliant fictional imagination at work here, but this novel tests even the most willing reader's patience. All the same, Mar¡as's is a world-class talent, one always worth reading. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151002762
• ISBN-13: 978-0151002764
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,322,926 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Javier Marías is an award-winning Spanish novelist. He is also a translator and columnist, as well as the current king of Redonda. He was born in Madrid in 1951 and published his first novel at the age of nineteen. He has held academic posts in Spain, the US (he was a visiting professor at Wellesley College) and Britain, as a lecturer in Spanish Literature at Oxford University. He has been translated into 34 languages, and more than six million copies of his books have been sold worldwide. In 1997 he won the Nelly Sachs Award; the Comunidad de Madrid award in 1998; in 2000 the Grinzane Cavour Award, the Alberto Moravia Prize, and the Dublin IMPAC Award. He also won the Spanish National Translation Award in 1979 for his translation of Tristram Shandy in 1979. He was a professor at Oxford University and the Complutense of Madrid. He currently lives in Madrid.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not enough stars, June 11, 2001

By 

Manola Sommerfeld (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (Hardcover)

At the beginning i thought this book was difficult to follow, and even a bit boring. My first impression is that the author was abusing the 'stream of consciousness' technique, just lost in his thoughts. But i continued reading and soon realized that there was a reason to the apparent 'madness'. This book is a concert of thoughts, all centered in a common point. The tangents or stories in the periphery were designed so skillfully that they complement the story without seeming superfluous: Ruibérriz, Celia/Victoria, el Único, all well defined and colorful characters, and the literary quotes mixed in with the text, the movie scenes, all contributing to enhance a plot already captivating. The main character struggles between decisions already taken or assumed, and the dialogs he has with himself are among the best i have read in Spanish literature in a long time.

The ending is unforeseen. When i thought i knew how things were developing, at the last moment i was surprised. Life can be so ironic, and laugh so much at our expense (or at Deán's expense, in this case).

The additional notes (another surprise i did not discover till the end) are very interesting, and if i had any doubts about the exceptional writer that Javier Marías is, i lost them completely after reading them. This novel cannot be missed.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The ultimate existential novel of our time, March 20, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (Hardcover)

A unique and haunting novel -- its words and ideas have stayed with me for months after completing it. Its thoughts have stimulated many philosophical discussions. It uses fiction to elaborate the questions of personal and subjective time, and the meaning of the intersubjective space. I regret I can read it only in translation. Nonetheless, the author's voice is unique and inquiring, and I can only imagine the recognition he will get in the future.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars it will stick with your forever!, May 26, 2002

By 

clau (mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (Hardcover)

I read this book because of the title. The author tells us a story about death and unexpected moments in life. After I read this book I've found myself thinking "tomorrow in the battle think on me" very often! Also this book changed my views on death, on dealing with it, and what happens to those left behind after someone's gone.
Great book about thoughts and ideas not so much about events.