Thus Bad Begins
2018 Longlist

Thus Bad Begins

Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
artwork-image

ABOUT
THE BOOK

Award-winning author Javier Marías weaves a darkly thrilling tale of love, betrayal and lives played out in the unhappy shadow of history

As a young man, Juan de Vere takes a job that will haunt him for the rest of his life. His employer is Eduardo Muriel: a famous film director, sophisticated and discreet. Muriel’s wife Beatriz is a soft, ripe woman who slips through her husband’s home like an unwanted ghost, finding solace in other beds. And on the periphery of their lives stands Dr Jorge Van Vechten, a old family friend with a shadowy past. Juan enters eagerly into Muriel’s world of glamour and prestige, but as time passes he is troubled by many questions that seem to have no answer. Why does Muriel hate Beatriz? How did Beatriz meet Van Vechten? And what happened in the chaotic years after the war?

As Juan learns more about his employers, his own innocence begins to fall away. Though he starts off as a mere observer, he is soon unable to stand on the side lines, compelled to interfere ever more dangerously in the dark interior of other people’s lives.

Marias presents a study of the infinitely permeable boundaries between private and public selves, between observer and participant, between the deceptions we suffer from others and those we enact upon ourselves.

 

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Javier
Marías

Javier Marías was the author of sixteen works in Spanish, which have been translated into forty-two languages including English. His translated English works are All Souls, A Heart So White, Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, When I Was Mortal, Dark Back of Time, The Man of Feeling, Voyage Along the Horizon, Written Lives, the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy (Fever and Spear, Dance and Dream and Poison, Shadow and Farewell), Bad Nature, While the Women Are Sleeping, The Infatuations, Thus Bad Begins and, Venice, An Interior. Javier Marías has received numerous literary prizes including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Prix Formentor.

Javier Marías was the author of sixteen works in Spanish, which have been translated into forty-two languages including English. His translated English works are All Souls, A Heart So White, Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, When I Was Mortal, Dark Back of Time, The Man of Feeling, Voyage Along the Horizon, Written Lives, the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy (Fever and Spear, Dance and Dream and Poison, Shadow and Farewell), Bad Nature, While the Women Are Sleeping, The Infatuations, Thus Bad Begins and, Venice, An Interior. Javier Marías has received numerous literary prizes including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Prix Formentor.

ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Margaret
Jull Costa

Margaret Elisabeth Jull Costa (born 2 May 1949) is a British translator of Portuguese- and Spanish-language fiction and poetry, including the works of Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, Eça de Queiroz, Fernando Pessoa, Paulo Coelho, Bernardo Atxaga, Carmen Martín Gaite, Javier Marías, and José Régio. She has won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize more times than any other translator.

Margaret Elisabeth Jull Costa (born 2 May 1949) is a British translator of Portuguese- and Spanish-language fiction and poetry, including the works of Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, Eça de Queiroz, Fernando Pessoa, Paulo Coelho, Bernardo Atxaga, Carmen Martín Gaite, Javier Marías, and José Régio. She has won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize more times than any other translator.

NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

A good mixture of psychological novel with the central theme of forgiveness and autobiography, Javier Marías’ own universe, well framed in the Spanish political transition from dictatorship to democracy, in the 1980s. Named a Best Book of the Year by the Boston Globe and Los Angeles times. Best Book of the Year in Spain, 2014.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Date published
23/09/2014
Country
Spain
Original Language
Spanish
Publisher
Penguin
Translator
Margaret Jull Costa
Translation
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa

RELATED FEATURES

News January 15 2025

2025 Longlist Revealed

Novels by seven Irish authors are among the 71 books nominated by 83 libraries around the world!
News November 19 2024

2025 Dublin Literary Award Judges Announced

Meet our judging panel for 2025 Dublin Literary Award
Video November 1 2024

2024 Dublin Literary Award Ceremony

2024 Dublin Literary Award Ceremony announcement live-streamed from the International Literature Festival Dublin.
Audio June 11 2024

All About Books Podcast Features the 2024 Dublin Literary Award

Dublin City FM podcaster Katy Conneely spotlights the award.

STAY CONNECTED

Stay in touch and sign up to our newsletter to receive all the latest news and updates on the Dublin Literary Award.