In To Begin at the Beginning, celebrated Spanish novelist and translator Javier Marias explores his impulse to write, the origins of his own family, and the connection between these two different sorts of beginnings. Exploring the difference between what is true in the world and what is true in fiction, he explains why an appeal to "real" events has never convinced him; why the history of his own family--with its Cuban and Spanish strands--has left him uncertain about what is legend and what is historic fact; and why what has been imagined or dreamed can end up being truer than what...
In To Begin at the Beginning, celebrated Spanish novelist and translator Javier Marias explores his impulse to write, the origins of his own fa...
