Tomás Nevinson

The final novel from Spain's most acclaimed writer, a novel about a charismatic half-Spanish, half-English man who is recruited by British intelligence

“Javier Marías’s best work.” —El País

Retired spy Tomás Nevinson — once an agent for the British Secret Service, now living a quiet life in his hometown, Madrid — is approached by his former handler, Bertram Tupra, with an offer to bring him back in from the cold for one last assignment.
 
The mission: to go undercover again, in a small Spanish town, to find out which of three women who moved there a decade ago is in fact a terrorist trained by the IRA, on the run after masterminding several deadly attacks.
 
Everything about the assignment is shadowy, from exactly who is in charge, to the question of what “justice” Nevinson will need to mete out once he unmasks the terrorist. But, lured by the appeal of being back on the inside, he accepts the job.
 
Nevinson soon becomes intimately involved with each of the three women. How — or whom — to choose among them? Under increasing pressure, he must choose, and then act...

Charting a world in which right and wrong, good and evil, are irreparably blurred, Javier Marías takes us on a journey of rare and unforgettable suspense in this, the final novel written before his untimely passing.

“Tomás Nevinson is brilliant proof of Marías’s elegance and literary gifts, such that it stands with his most important books. It is his definitive work.” Karina Sainz Borgo, Voz Populi

“Seductively conversational and glinting with slantwise humour... It’s serious stuff but there’s room for lightness as well... Inescapably poignant... Keep them coming, you think, knowing there’s no more left.” Anthony Cummins, The Observer

“Marías mesmerises us again and we are swept on by the long, powerful swells of his prose, flawlessly translated by Margaret Jull Costa... This is a spy thriller, but it reads like one transposed into music by Philip Glass... A many-layered meditation on mortality and memory and free will and its opposite.” Lucy Hughes-Hallett, The Guardian

“An ingenious premise... Marías plays deliberately and unsettlingly with the appearance of real and terrible events in the middle of a novel that owes such an obvious debt to the pleasures of genre... In one of Nevinson’s conversations with the socialist wife, they ‘agreed that really good authors — who, according to her, were getting fewer in number — managed “magically” (her rather affected word) to make us believe their stories and passionately engage with them’... This, of course, is a very good description of Marías himself, who died last year from Covid complications. Which means that number has become even smaller.” Benjamin Markovits, New York Times Book Review

“Engrossing... No-one nowadays writes prose like Javier Marías... In Tomás Nevinson, Marías demonstrates why so many of his peers believe him to be among the greatest of contemporary novelists. Like a secret agent, he is an observer and an eavesdropper, and an inventor. If you’re already a fan, you’ll know what to expect and rejoice. If you’re not, what a treat you have in store.” Rosemary Goring, Herald Scotland

“His writing is often thrilling in a way that’s distinct from any other author I know... His novels come to us in stunning translations by Margaret Jull Costa... Reading him can become an addiction... Once you’ve been inside Marías’s world, to spend too long outside is unbearable.” Chris Power, Sunday Times (U.K.)

Javier Marías was born in Madrid in 1951. He has 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 44 languages, has sold nine 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.