"From Spain's most acclaimed writer, a novel about a charismatic half-Spanish, half-English man who is recruited by British intelligence. Thou shalt not kill. But, as our narrator admits, "Killing is not so extreme or so difficult or unjust if you know who you are killing, what crimes he has committed or announced he is going to commit, how many evils you would save people from, how many innocent lives would be preserved in exchange . . ." The British Embassy, Madrid, 1997. Against his better judgment, Tomâas Nevinson re-enters the Secret Service and is sent to a small town to identify a suspect behind several deadly terrorist attacks carried out by the IRA and ETA. Nevinson must decide which of three women is the mastermind and kill her before it's too late. The assignment smacks of his former boss Bertram Tupra and his questionable methods-but Nevinson can't see a way out. Tomâas Nevinson is the story of a man who has stretched the limits of what a person can bear, but then is asked to go beyond them. At once a gripping spy narrative and a profound reflection on evil and morality and doubt, it is a chilling, labyrinthine novel that expands Javier Marâias's fascinating fictional universe"--

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 forty-four 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.

Translated by Margaret Jull Costa