Dark Back of Time

Dark Back of Time by the Spanish author Javier Marias is an amazing digressive, thoughtful and just plain interesting book. not sure how to categorise it - memoir? extended essay? does it matter? One of the themes Marias explores is the reaction and consequences of the publication of his earlier book All Souls, based in Oxford and narrated by a visiting Spanish academic. Marias talks about the difference between fiction and reality and yet how these get confused by people and also in some ways seem to converge - when a fictional work generates reality, some times directly and sometimes as a result of coincidence or chance. There's no need to have read All Souls (but it is a lovely story) and in fact Dark Back of Time is a longer book. The book contains a number of short narratives. which may be real or fictional, as well as snippets of memoir and references to numerous authors and books. Its an unusual book and a wonderfully written one.