In To Begin at the Beginning, celebrated Spanish novelist and
translator Javier Marias explores his impulse to write, the origins
of his own family, and the connection between these two different
sorts of beginnings. Exploring the difference between what is true
in the world and what is true in fiction, he explains why an appeal
to "real" events has never convinced him; why the history of his
own family with its Cuban and Spanish strands has left him
uncertain about what is legend and what is historic fact; and why
what has been imagined or dreamed can end up being truer than what
"really happened." Complemented by an essay by Margaret Jull Costa
on the practice of translating Marias, the cahier is also
accompanied by images taken from the works of the influential Cuban
artist Wifredo Lam. The result is a beautifully produced chapbook
by one of Europe's preeminent novelists, ready to be discovered and
celebrated by English readers. "It is a rare gift, to be offered a
writer who lives in our own time but speaks with the intensity of
the past, who comes with the extra richness lent by a foreign
history and nonetheless knows our own culture inside out. Yet,
strangely, Marias who is famous in Spain and garlanded with prizes
from the rest of Europe remains almost unknown in America. What are
we waiting for? All the gifts we are offered in life (as Marias
himself is fond of pointing out) are fleeting ones, easily lost or
ignored or undervalued and only regretted when they are no longer
available to us. It's high time we accepted this one." New York
Times
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