The mortally in love

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The mortally in love (orig. Los enamoramientos ) is the title of a novel by the Spanish author Javier Marías . The novel was published by Alfaguara Verlag in 2011 and a German translation by S. Fischer Verlag in 2012 .

content

The novel tells the story of the publisher's editor María Dolz , who, through the everyday sight of a couple in love in her regular café, gains an insight into social conditions, which she finds by far more pleasant than the bad novels that María deals with at the publisher. From one day to the next, the couple suddenly stays away and María learns the circumstances from the newspaper. The man was Miguel Deverne , a film entrepreneur who was stabbed to death by the homeless Luis Felipe Vázquez Canella . María and his widow Luisa become friends, at the same time she meets Javier Díaz-Varela , with whom she starts an affair. Javier's intense care for Luisa seems suspicious to her. While overhearing a conversation, María recognizes the connection that apparently exists between Javier and Miguel's death. Javier admits the blackmailing of the homeless murderer, which he justifies with the apparently incurable illness of Miguel. After her failed relationship with Javier, María investigates the murder on the Internet. She is puzzled because none of the journalists ever mentions Miguel's fateful findings from the doctors. Was Javier trying to get rid of a rival? Two years later, María arrives for a business lunch, and a few moments later Luisa and Javier appear, wearing the same rings. María thinks Javier has achieved his goal.

Narrative technique

The novel is about a mysterious love story that takes place in the border area between reality and illusion . Although the novel is not designed as a detective novel, it touches on fundamental ethical issues such as impunity and the justification of murder. In this novel, too, Javier Marías knows how to lead readers astray and unsettle them with the ambiguous narrative situations typical of his style, because at the end of the story nothing is as it was at the beginning. Through the detective approach of the protagonist, who acts between power and restraint, the intrigues and losses behind love are uncovered. The story, which takes place almost without an external plot, is increasingly played out in the thoughts of the main character. The protagonist becomes increasingly entangled in a tangle of thoughts of curiosity, suspicion and deception. Javier Marías lets María Dolz perform with her own voice. She also embodies the only female main character in Javier Marías' novels. The story is nourished by autobiographical circumstances, in that the author allows characters from professional groups (interpreters, ghostwriters, lecturers) to appear, with whom he was in contact in his professional life and sometimes also exercised them himself. The exact knowledge of certain professions gives the text authenticity.

intertextuality

In his new novel, Marías illustrates the strength that two people draw from love to tread a new path and to make the old forgotten by including Honoré de Balzac's Colonel Chabert in the story. Colonel Chabert, who is pronounced dead during the Napoleonic Wars and who years later returns to his wife, who is newly married, is denied as a living person and is considered a ballast of the present. In the novel Die Mortal Verliebten , Javier quotes some passages from history for María and summarizes them for her. Javier's enthusiasm for Colonel Chabert is not accidental: Deverne is killed so that Javier can marry his widow, Chabert is declared dead so that his widow can marry another man of better standing. The mortally in love continues this theme as the past comes to an end and the present opens a new chapter. The new marriage is the beginning and the goal at the same time, in order to be able to renounce the former love, which is not infinite but transitory. The separation of love and obsession is no longer clearly marked here, but rather blurs over the course of history.

Awards

Mortally in Love has been translated into 18 languages ​​and named Book of the Year 2011 in Spain. In 2012 he was awarded the national literary prize Premio Nacional de Narrativa for Los enamoramientos , but he refused to accept it.

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ijoma Mangold: Writer Javier Marías: The relativization as an anthropological constant . In: The time . No. 09/2012 ( online ).
  2. ↑ http://www.fischerverlage.de/sixcms/media.php/810/Uebersetzungarbeit.pdf , p. 2
  3. ^ Ijoma Mangold: Writer Javier Marías: The main thing is to keep muddling . In: The time . No. 09/2012 ( online ).
  4. ↑ http://buzzaldrins.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/die-sterblich-verliebten-javier-marias/

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