Book excerpt: A detailed and lively discussion and analysis of the novels, short stories, newspaper columns, and other works of one of the most important and popular writers in Spain today. This book provides the most comprehensive study to date of the full range of Marías' writing, including discussion and analysis of his literary and intellectual formation, his development as a novelist and short story writer, andhis unique perspective offered in nearly twenty-five years of newspaper columns on topics ranging from religion to football. Above all, Marías is examined as a writer of fictions. As a translator of several canonical works from English to Spanish, Marías came to appreciate the preciseness of words as well as their ambiguity, their capacity to represent as well as their propensity to distort. The author examines Marías's constant awareness of how languagecan be used to construct stories as the foundation for engaging the world as well as for imagining it. The nature of Marías's storytelling, and the way in which he imagines, form the principal focus of this Companion. David K. Herzberger is Professor and Chair of the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of California, Riverside.