A Heart So White

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New Directions Publishing, 2000 - Fiction - 278 pages
Javier Marķas's A Heart So White chronicles with unnerving insistence the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy--its possible convenience, its price, and even its civility--hovers throughout 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: Marķas elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into shadows and on to the costs of ambivalence. ("My hands are of your colour; but I shame/To wear a heart so white"--Shakespeare's Macbeth.)

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Contents

Section 1
3
Section 2
9
Section 3
24
Section 4
47
Section 5
68
Section 6
71
Section 7
90
Section 8
112
Section 10
145
Section 11
164
Section 12
184
Section 13
204
Section 14
221
Section 15
237
Section 16
271
Copyright

Section 9
132

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About the author (2000)

Javier Marķas Franco (born 1951) was a Spanish author of novels, collections of short stories and essays. He studied philosophy and literature at the Complutense University of Madrid, 1968-1973. His first novel, The Dominions of the Wolf, was published in 1971. Some of his books included All Souls, A Heart So White, Dark Back of Time, Tomorrow in the Battle Think of Me, and other works. He was also a translator. He translated English literary works into the Spanish language during the 1970s and beyond. They include such authors as Updike, Hardy, Conrad, Faulkner and other well-known authors. Javier Marķas was a columnist. He made regular contribution to La Pais. His column, La Zona Fantasma, appeared in the monthly magazine, The Believer. He received numerous awards and honors. Javier Marķas contracted COVID-19. Later, he died of pneumonia in Madrid, on September 11, 2022, at age 70. Margaret Jull Costa has translated into the English more than 35 books, including Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago's "All the Names" & "The Tale of the Unknown Island", Antonio Perez Reverte's "The Flander's Panel", Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet" & Luisa Valenzuela's "Bedside Manners". She lives in London.

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