Javier Marias

The writer Javier Marias was born in Madrid in 1951, the second youngest son of the philosopher Julian Marias. He published his first novel The Dominions of the Wolf at the age of 17, after running away to Paris. He studied English Literature at University in Madrid and has translated into Spanish works by Lawrence Sterne, Thomas Hardy, Isaak Dinesen and Seamus Heaney. In 1997'A Heart So White' won the IMPAC Dublin literary award and became a bestseller in Europe. His work has been published in more than 34 languages. During the 1980s, Javier Marias taught at Universities in Madrid, Oxford and Venice and at Wellesley College, Boston. His novel, All Souls, set in Oxford and containing a sensitive portrayal of the English writer, John Gawsworth, led to Marias inheriting the Kingdom Of Redonda, a real but barren island in the Caribbean and also a imaginary literary kingdom since it was claimed by the writer, MP Shiel, in 1865, the title of which he passed on to Gawsworth. Despite being a Republican, Marias has entered into the spirit of Redonda - conferring titles, establishing his own press and literary prizes. Javier Marias has been described as "one of the world's major living authors" and his recent work - the first two volumes of the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy - has been compared to Proust. He publishes a weekly column for the Spanish newspaper El Pais and is one of the country's leading intellectuals. He lives in Madrid.