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Javier Marias
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Thus Bad Begins: A novel Hardcover – Deckle Edge, November 1, 2016

by Javier Marias (Author), Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 251 ratings
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  6. ISBN-10
    1101946083
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    978-1101946084
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Editorial Reviews

Review

*Named the #1 Best Book of the Year in Spain by El País*

“As a literary mystery, Thus Bad Begins calls to mind Paul Auster, Donna Tartt, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón; purely as literature, it feels like an heir to the searching human nuance of the novels of Gabriel García Márquez . . . Javier Marías is the real deal . . . Mesmerizing.” —USA Today

“The book that defines Marías’s oeuvre as one of Spain’s most celebrated contemporary writers . . . Marías creates a symphony.” —Boston Globe

“A demonstration of what fiction at its best can achieve.” —Hari Kunzru, The Guardian 

“A major work from a global talent, Thus Bad Begins knits Hitchcockian suspense into a hypnotic tale crackling with erotic tension and political strife.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune 

“Erudite, strange, hypnotic, and beautiful . . . One reads Javier Marías for his ability to make the smallest parts of the world come alive . . . I found myself most loving the book for its pages of brilliant observations, its musings and its suspenseful elegant voice . . . I could not put it down.” —Los Angeles Times
 
“‘Rear Window’ in Madrid . . . Thus Bad Begins delivers all of Marías’s trademark qualities—chewy philosophical meditation, prose of fastidious elegance, and the suspense of an old-fashioned potboiler . . . It’s now clear that Margaret Jull Costa and Javier Marías have forged one of the most fruitful author-translator partnerships in current literature.” —Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

“Fascinating . . . Hypnotic . . . As de Vere and Muriel try to get to the heart of matters, they discover secrets they wish they hadn’t . . . but the reader will devour every exquisitely wretched revelation.” —TIME
 
“I read the final pages in full thrall of Marías’s novelistic power . . . I was reminded too that Marías is a master of a kind of suspense that is rare in the modern novel.” —Karan Mahajan, New York Times Book Review

“Marías is the leading light of a generation of Spanish novelists . . . Thus Bad Begins has lots to say about the political and social changes that have shaped Marías’s outlook. It’s also a kind of tragedy in comic form, or perhaps the other way round . . . Marías never seems seriously troubled by the long list of technical challenges he has to tackle to develop all this. With immense adroitness, he makes sure that Eduardo isn’t simply a wronged husband or a vengeful sadist and keeps Beatriz from turning into a doormat, a hysteric, or a vamp, and thereby maintains the reader’s sympathy for both.” —Christopher Tayler, Harper’s

“On the surface, the novel is part detective caper and part domestic drama. [But] Thus Bad Begins isn’t merely a novel about specific characters and their specific scandals; rather, they are stand-ins for the universal . . . If novels can be calls to action, then this one is a clarion for open dialogue.” —Village Voice 

“Javier Marías captures his nation’s long-lasting trauma . . . In Madrid of 1980, the setting for Thus Bad Begins, an entire country finds itself at a crossroads . . . Each of Marías’s characters must decide how much is worth forgiving and how much might be worth forgetting.” —Washington Post

“Javier Marías has entered that rarefied space in which a writer becomes essential to society. He is a critical conscience who can express what philosophers and political scientists can’t…. Thus Bad Begins is a novel, of course, but it could be perfectly read, too, as a beautiful, savage essay on hypocrisy.” —Álvaro Enrigue, Publishers Weekly 
 
“Enticing and absolutely addictive . . . Marías is a writer of formidable skills and achievement.” —Washington Times

“In highly respected Spanish novelist Marías’s new work, we quickly see that political tensions have continued to reverberate [from the Spanish Civil War] . . . Marías reveals how insidiously oppression skews personal lives and relationships year after year.” —Booklist

“Marías’s marvelously idiosyncratic sentences achieve a dazzling textual equivalent of life’s endless complexity. Another challenging, boundary-stretching work from Marías, complete with a jaw-dropping last-chapter revelation.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Marías’s latest resumes his trademark themes of the quest for truth and the haunting presence of Spain’s civil war . . . It wallops audiences with some startling twists.” —Library Journal

“A novel that teases, tantalises, entertains, and is easily as engrossing as anything he’s written before . . . Marías manages to tread the tightrope between a very literary fiction and an absorbing plot; the book dangles the promise of dark, sexual secrets revealed, even as it draws you into a contemplation of the wrenching dilemmas that have shaped modern Spain.” —Siobhan Murphy, The Times

“Marías is Spain’s own modern-day Cervantes . . . His style is less showy than Umberto Eco’s, and wittier and more playful than Elena Ferrante’s.” —Robert Collins, The Sunday Times
 
“A simply unputdownable psychological and erotic and political thriller.” —Amanda Craig, BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review
 
“One of Marías’s most enjoyable and accessible novels.” —Luke Brown, Financial Times
 
“A ferociously addictive, troubling, seductive read . . . I was gripped by every word.” —Emma Townshend, Independent on Sunday
 
“Hypnotic . . . There’s a slow-building sense of Hitchcock in Vertigo mode that keeps us engaged.” —Lee Langley, The Spectator
 
“Magnificent.” —John Harding, Daily Mail
 
“Never less than seamlessly elegant . . . As brilliantly well conceived and emotionally profound as one has come to expect from this master.” —Rosemary Goring, The Herald (Scotland)

About the Author

JAVIER MARÍAS was born in Madrid in 1951. The recipient of numerous prizes, including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Prix Femina Étranger, he has written fourteen novels, three story collections, and twenty works of collected articles and essays. His books have been translated into forty-three languages, in fifty-five countries, and have sold more than eight million copies throughout the world.

Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf; First American Edition (November 1, 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1101946083
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1101946084
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.7 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.7 x 1.55 x 9.6 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 251 ratings

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Javier Marias

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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

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
251 global ratings
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Top reviews from the United States

lapidaryblue
4.0 out of 5 stars Translation issues?
Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2017
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gary a barbanel
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read
Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2016
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4 people found this helpful
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khader
3.0 out of 5 stars should be new book
Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2022
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One person found this helpful
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Doug
4.0 out of 5 stars Worth Reading, but Not a Light Read
Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2017
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2 people found this helpful
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Carole A. Reedy
5.0 out of 5 stars Yet another brilliant novel by Javier Marias
Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2016
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4 people found this helpful
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C. Watts
4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing language usage, fabulous sentences, flawed characters. Great reading!
Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2017
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Amazon User J
2.0 out of 5 stars The book is not an easy read. Perhaps it is the translation
Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2017
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JV
4.0 out of 5 stars Hard to Go Wrong
Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2018
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Top reviews from other countries

Lady Vibart
4.0 out of 5 stars Scary read on slow burn
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 3, 2020
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3 people found this helpful
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Roman Clodia
4.0 out of 5 stars Love, lies, retribution...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 9, 2019
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R. Naftalin
5.0 out of 5 stars Cover-up is maybe a better option.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 3, 2016
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3 people found this helpful
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Dorian Gray
5.0 out of 5 stars the dark side of masculinity
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 9, 2018
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Dorian Gray
5.0 out of 5 stars the dark side of masculinity
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 9, 2018
not so much a who dunnit
not even a why dunnit
more a how dunnit
the crime ? blackmailing women into having sex
the offenders ? those who backed General Franco during the Spanish Civil War
the victims ? those that didn't … or rather the womenfolk of those that didn't ... wives , sisters , daughters
this dark chapter of Spanish history went on for decades
right up until Franco's death in 1975 … and maybe even after that
many of the victims + perpetrators will still be alive today
the depiction of victims + offenders is worthy of Dostoevsky
the translation into English is flawless
Thus Bad Begins brilliantly to reveal the dark side of masculinity
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2 people found this helpful
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Doodles
1.0 out of 5 stars Self-indulgent
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 5, 2017
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