All Souls - Paperback

All Souls by Javier Marías

From one of the most important voices in world literature and the award-winning author of The Infatuations, comes a darkly comic campus novel and love story about that most British of institutions, Oxford University. "Javier Marías is in my opinion one of the best contemporary writers," says J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize-winning author of Disgrace.

A Prismatic View of Oxford

In All Souls, a visiting Spanish lecturer views Oxford through a lens of prismatic detachment, alternately amused, puzzled, delighted, and disgusted by its vagaries of human vanity. Somewhat lonely and not always able to see his charming but very married mistress, he casts about for activity, though he barely has to teach. Yet so much goes into simply "being" at Oxford: friendship, opinion-mongering, one-upmanship, finicky exchanges of favors, gossip, adultery, book-collecting, back-patting, and backstabbing.

Literary Fiction with Dark Comedy

Marías demonstrates a sweet tooth for eccentricity in this novel, capturing the peculiar rituals and social dynamics of academic life. The narrative explores themes of isolation, infidelity, and the absurdities inherent in university culture through the eyes of an outsider who observes with both affection and critical distance.

About Javier Marías

JAVIER MARÍAS was born in Madrid in 1951. He published fifteen novels, including The Infatuations and A Heart So White, as well as three collections of short stories and several volumes of essays. His work has been translated into forty-four languages, has sold more than eight and a half million copies worldwide, and has won a dazzling array of international literary awards, including the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Prix Femina Étranger. He died in 2022.

Translated by Margaret Jull Costa