Javier Marías

Javier Marías, (born September 20 1951), is a Spanish novelist, translator and columnist. He is also one of the king of the uninhabited Caribbean microstate of Redonda.

Marías was born in Madrid, his father was a teacher who was briefly imprisoned and then banned from teaching for opposing the government of Francisco Franco. He wrote his first novel The Dominions of the Wolf at the age of 17 after running away to Paris. After attending the Complutense University of Madrid Marías turned his attention to translating English novels into Spanish. Some of the authors whom he translated include John Updike, Thomas Hardy, Vladimir Nabokov, and Robert Louis Stevenson. In 1979 he won the Spanish national award for translation for his version of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy.

After returning to original composition Marías won the 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his 1992 novel A Heart So White. His sympathetic portrayal of John Gawsworth, the third King of Redonda, so touched the "reigning" king Jon Wynne-Tyson that he abdicated and left the throne to Marías in 1997. Since taking the throne Marías has given honourary titles to such people as Pedro Almodóvar, Francis Ford Coppola, and A. S. Byatt.

Bibliography

• Los Dominios del Lobo (1971)
• Travesia del Horizonte (1972)
• El Monarca del Tiempo (1978)
• El Siglo (1982)
• The Man of Feeling (1986)
• All Souls (1989)
• A Heart So White (1992)
• Tomorrow in the Battle Think On Me (1994)
• When I Was Mortal (1996)
• Dark Back of Time (1998)
• Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear (2005)