Thus Bad Begins by Javier Marías review – too much dazzle

Javier Marías’s elegant 14th novel yokes Spain’s dark past to a tale of domestic spying – but the result lacks substance

Javier Marías is one of Spain’s greatest contemporary writers whose The Infatuations was one of the outstanding novels of 2013. A profound anglophile, he’s also a literary all-rounder who works as a distinguished translator, has a column in El País, and runs his own publishing house.

Like many ageing Spaniards, Marías has unfinished business with the civil war of 1936-39. His father was a victim of the nationalist dictatorship, and his new novel unites these themes. Its title comes from Hamlet Act III, scene iv (“Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind”). Set in the recent past, it grapples obsessively with the poisoned aftermath of Franco’s regime, unfolding a tale of deceit, treachery and revenge worthy of, and possibly inspired by, Shakespeare.

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