Ten top novels set in Spain

Stephen Burgen writes for The Guardian and Observer. He is a translator from Spanish & Catalan.

One title on his list of ten of the best novels set in Spain:

A Heart so White by Javier Marías

Sometimes cited as Spain’s greatest living writer, Marías’s A Heart so White begins with a shocking suicide but, while it uses some of the devices of a thriller, its themes are marriage and betrayal, while the narrator discovers things he’d rather not have known about his father’s past. The stylised and parenthetical writing can be tiring and sometimes irritating but the story is gripping and readers should persevere through some of the slower passages. Juan, the narrator, is a UN interpreter and, inevitably, the book has much to say about the nuances of language.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue